TOPIC: WINDOWS XP
Vista is coming…
24th January 20072007-01-30 (next Tuesday) is given as the date for Windows Vista's launch to the wider world. It's an expensive beast, so I think that I'll wait for a while and take the plunge when all the hype has died down. When compared with retail prices, it appears that a TechNet Plus subscription would be a good move, particularly as it would be useful to have an awareness of up-and-coming Microsoft Technology for my work. However, what looks really tempting is the OEM option. There are caveats with this, especially since Microsoft changed the licensing arrangements so that OEM Windows should only be bought installed on a complete PC. This has always been the case with its server and office software, but buying a component such as a CPU or hard drive once was sufficient for OEM Windows. I suppose that I'll keep waiting then...
Office 2007 on test…
23rd January 2007With its imminent launch and having had a quick at one of its beta releases, I decided to give Office 2007 a longer look after it reached its final guise. This is courtesy of the demonstration version that can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website; I snagged Office Standard which contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Very generously, the trial version that I am using gives me until the end of March to come to my final decision.
And what are my impressions? Outlook, the application from the suite that I most use, has changed dramatically since Outlook 2002, the version that I have been using. Unless you open up an email in full screen mode, the ribbon interface so prevalent in other members of the Office family doesn’t make much of an appearance here. The three-paned interface taken forward from Outlook 2003 is easy to get around. I especially like the ability to collapse/expand a list of emails from a particular sender: it really cuts down on clutter. The ZoneAlarm anti-spam plug-in on my system was accepted without any complaint, as were all of my PST files. One thing that needed redoing was the IMAP connection to my FastMail webmail account, but that was driven more by Outlook warning messages than by necessity from a user experience point of view. Though I have still to get my Hotmail account going, I lost that connection when still using Outlook 2002, and after I upgraded to IE7.
What do I make of the ribbon interface? As I have said above, Outlook is not pervaded by the new interface paradigm until you open up an email. Nevertheless, I have had a brief encounter with Word 2007 and am convinced that the new interface works well. It didn’t take me long to find my way around at all. In fact, I think that they have done an impressive job with the new main menu triggered by the Office Button (as Microsoft call it) and got all sorts of things in there; the list includes Word options, expanded options for saving files (including the new DOCX file format, of course, but the doc format has not been discarded either) and a publishing capability that includes popular blogs (WordPress.com, for instance) together with document management servers. Additionally, the new zoom control on the bottom right-hand corner is much nicer than the old dropdown menu. As regards the “ribbon”, this is an extension of the tabbed interfaces seen in other applications like Adobe HomeSite and Adobe Dreamweaver, the difference being that the tabs are the only place where any function is found because there is no menu back up. There is an Add-ins tab that captures plug-ins to things like Adobe Distiller for PDF creation. Macromedia in its pre-Adobe days offered FlashPaper for doing the same thing, and this seems to function without a hitch in Word 2007. Right-clicking on any word in your document not only gives you suggested corrections to misspellings but also synonyms (no more Shift-F7 for the thesaurus, though it is still there is you need it) and enhanced on-the-spot formatting options. A miniature formatting menu even appears beside the expected context menu; I must admit that I found that a little annoying at the beginning, but I suppose that I will learn to get used to it.
My use of Outlook and Word will continue, the latter’s blogging feature is very nice, but I haven’t had reason to look at Excel or PowerPoint in detail thus far. From what I have seen, the ribbon interface pervades in those applications too. Even so, my impressions of the latest Office are very favourable. The interface overhaul may be radical, yet it does work. Though their changing the file formats is a more subtle change, it does mean that users of previous Office versions will need the converter tool in order for document sharing to continue. Office 97 was the last time when we had to cope with that, and it didn’t seem to cause the world to grind to a halt.
Will I upgrade? I have to say that it is very likely given what is available in Office Home and Student edition. While that version misses out on having Outlook, the prices mean that even buying Outlook standalone to compliment what it offers remains a sensible financial option. Having a look at the retail prices on dabs.com confirms the point:
Office Home and Student Edition: £94.61
Office Standard Edition: £285.50
Office Standard Edition Upgrade: £175.96
Outlook 2007: £77.98
Having full version software for the price of an upgrade appeals to me, and it is likely to be the route that I take, if I replace the Office XP Standard Edition installation that has been my mainstay over the last few years. Having been on a Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows 98 SE > Windows ME upgrade treadmill and endured the hell raised when reinstallation becomes unavoidable, the full product approach to getting the latest software appeals to me over the upgrade pathway. In fact, I bought Windows XP Professional as the full product to start afresh after moving on from Windows 9x.
Adding a new hard drive
21st January 2007
Having during the week obtained a new 320 GB hard drive, today I am adding it to my system after yesterdays scare with a PSU. As with any such item, you need to format and configure it to work with your operating system, be it Windows, Linux or whatever. Good old Partition Magic can help with this (I have version 7 from the Powerquest days) but Windows XP (Professional, anyway) does offer its own tool for the job: the Disk Management console. Unfortunately, it's a bit difficult to find. The easiest way to get to it is to type diskmgmt.msc into the Run command box. Otherwise, it is a matter of setting your Start Menu to show the Administrative Tools group (Taskbar and Start Menu properties> Start Menu tab > Customise > Advanced tab) and accessing through the computer Management console, for which there is a shortcut in this group. Of course, you need to have administrator access to your PC to do any of this.