Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, and Blogging!

First off, I swear this isn’t a crime, while I may be posting to Linux development planets from Windows Vista, I have a good excuse.

I didn’t have to pay! Well… sort of. Perhaps the greatest benefit of being a University student is that you tend to get lots of cool site-licensed software, for free! (Yes, I am well aware my tuition is paying for it, but its more fun this way). As a result, I grabbed a copy of my new favorite Open Source Virtualization Solution at www.virtualbox.org, and away I went!

I have another confession to make, this post is being composed in the new Word 2007, which raises the bar for blogging software everywhere.

Now that I have all that out of my system, lets play the ‘Cool new features and stuff’ game. As far as Vista itself goes, it looks cool, the Control Panel has been overhauled, along with a bunch of other administrative interfaces, but in the end, it’s nothing mind-altering on the UI side, just solid, tried and true. Office 2007 on the other hand is a whole different story. I would like to think the growing and serious interest in Openoffice.org was what kicked Microsoft off of its proverbial ass to give us something truly new and, if I may say so, incredible.

After several lackluster hours of playing around with Vista, my Office 2007 was just wrapping up its download/install, and my hopes were pretty low, after all, Vista was a cool new skin, with some fun features, but nothing really useful so far. As soon as I opened up Word, I knew I had underestimated the worlds most powerful and influential software giant. Word still has that white space in the middle of the screen where you type, but most of what we knew of Office 2003 ends there. The entire toolbar/formatting system has been radically redesigned, eager to give it a whirl; I almost jumped at the next serious paper I had to write. While there was some confusion at first, I quickly started to like the new system, so much so that I have serious concerns about my ability to return to Oo.org. I don’t have the time, energy, or general willpower to write up another review, there are literally hundreds out there, go read one of them, but what I will say, is we have a learning experience here. I’m not advocating we start copying stuff, but I think Office’s new streamlined system is a great example of keeping the information most relevant and needed close at hand.

Now, If I were a millionaire, we could donate copies so everyone could try it out, but just so, that’s not my luck, however if you have a chance to try out the new Office, do so, it’s a trip.

Note: I started playing with the new Outlook as well, its changes were more mild, but still, there are some cool new UI components/features that are worth looking at, but I don’t want to make up my mind on that until I’ve used it a little longer.