I know what most people will say that new is better and that as a technology/IT worker you have to keep up with technology. I simply don’t buy into this crap. Technology is simply here to assist you to improve productivity and do whatever you want to get done, rather than making people feel cool just because the software introduces some shiny buttons and ribbon bars hanging on top of the screen shouting out for attention. Oh, I’m talking about Microsoft Office 2007, not Iphones or IPods (which appears to be shiny and sleek for some other good reasons).
I have found absolutely no motivation whatsoever to upgrade to Office 2007. OK, maybe only 15% tempted which still doesn’t gives me any justification to take any action. Heck, there’s even OpenOffice 3.0 for free nowadays.
For me, the only (yes, only) good reason so far is because of Excel. Excel 2003 has the limit of 65536 rows by 256 columns which had been quite a problem for dealing with large data feeds which have lots and lots of row of data. Excel 2007 on the other hand, pushed that limit up to 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. Columns now end at XFD instead of IV.
Whatever new features Office 2007 have with Words or Powerpoint, this new limitation for Excel 2007 simply outrules them all. Now, if only there’s some kind of freeware which can read and show as many rows as Excel 2007 can, that would be even better. Calc in OpenOffice 3.0 currently sets a maximum limit of 65,536 rows by 1024 columns.
Now I’ve said mine, what’s your take? What new features in Office 2007 that you simply can’t live without and can’t find in Office 2003?
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