Have you been thinking about upgrading to Microsoft’s Office 2007?

With the release of both Windows Vista and Office 2007, you may be wondering if it is worth your time. Well the answer is – maybe it is? As The Technology Therapist, I would like to ask you to step back and ask yourself a few questions before you make the plunge.

Questions you want to ask yourself before you decide:

1. Is your existing computer capable to upgrade? Do you have enough space, ram and processing power?
2. What version of Microsoft Office are you running now? Are there new features in 2007 that would make you and your team more productive? You may want to take the time to do a side-by-side comparison.
3. Do you have money in your budget for training after you upgrade? 2007 is different and without an overview course you may find yourself wasting time looking for things that you use to find in the blink of an eye.

Office 2007 offers a completely new look, replacing the traditional menu and toolbars with a new feature called a ribbon. The ribbon is a cross between a toolbar and a menu offering more graphical representations of tools in the application. Office 2007 is laid out in a more logical manner for new users. However, for the existing users Office 2007 will take some time to get use to. As a power user of the office suite, I am disappointed to see that they removed some of my favorite tools from the ribbon, but do not fear you can add these tools to the quick access toolbar.

Each application boasts new features like an RSS Feeder in Outlook, and a new formula ribbon in Excel. Overall the biggest enhancement is that the new Office Suite provides some new graphics tools to help users create more eye catching documents and spreadsheets.

So is it worth the upgrade? Why not try it out for yourself and decide. Microsoft is actually offering a free trial download for 60 days. I’m happy to see they have finally started offering trials for free. This free trial will give you a true sense of what the application is capable of, and how it will run on your system. You can test all the applications and still leave your previous versions on, in case you decide it’s not for you. You can do this with every application except Outlook. To test Outlook you will need to remove the previous version.

And if you are wondering if I made the jump to 2007, the answer is yes, but only on one computer. Although I have to stay up to date, I am not ready to migrate my entire office just yet.

Labels: Office 2007 - Software advice