Word 2007

Today, I'm working the desk in the South LAC as well as the ACHD phones. This certainly provides an interesting opportunity, as I am now having some time up close and personal (for the first time) with Microsoft Office 2007. I would still like to get my own copies of Vista and Office 2007, but at the very least, this is proving to be an interesting foray.

It'll be the first time since its release that I've had Word 2007 opened for more than a few minutes. I find it interesting, actually that the first thing I find in Word 2007 is the blog post function. I can see the usefulness though, it's a nice simplified view that provides mainly the functionality that I would need/want while writing a blog post. I can see actually, how somebody doing this for a living might want something like this.

One of the biggest changes is the ribbon and that new Office button. The ribbon provides what could be an excellent and much simpler interface to Word functionality. Although, it could also confuse a lot of veteran office users to no end. Plus, with no "traditional" menus such as File and Edit, I happen to have received several "how do you print?" questions about Office 2007. Once I got over myself and my Office 2003/2004 expertise, I realized that this is a great program. Presumably, it's suitemates in the Office 2007 systems are also worth their weight, but I haven't tried them yet.

I suppose this means that I am holding out, and instead of switching all of my office tasks over to Apple's new iWork '08 suite, I am going to be looking at Office 2007 and Office 2008 more closely. I am even considering just only using a PC for Office tasks, were I to get a newer mobile computer that happens to have the ability to run Windows. (Thinkpad T61, R61 or X61!)

Another interesting tidbit is that the monitors here at the S-LAC can be raised pretty high up. I can see how for somebody concerned with ergonomics, or rotating the display, that would be a pretty important little tidbit. It is accomplished on these (and other similar Dell LCD monitors) by pressing the button on the back of the base, and lifting the display up.

Also: I've linked my blog site to the blog of one of my online friends, Aeroraptor.