Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007

5 thoughts on “Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007”

1. Review by pm444 for Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
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   While Office 2003 offered a refreshed look and some improvements in functionality, the basic structure remained the same. While veteran users were able to easily navigate the familiar menus, it had become increasingly difficult to locate some features (for instance, in Word, would you find “insert new rows” to a table in the “insert” or “table” menu?).

   With Office 2007, Microsoft offers the “ribbon”, a new and more intuitive way to access features that we used to find in the menus. While the features are basically the same, they are now grouped together according to when and how you would normally use them. These groupings are accessed by clicking on tabs, which are organized in the order you’d use them. The best way to get a better understanding of this change is to check out the screenshots, or download a free trial version of Office from Microsoft. While Office 2007 was released at the same time as Vista, you do not need Vista in order to run it. The program ran fine on my Windows XP laptop, which only had 512 MB of RAM, and it runs even better on my Vista laptop with 2 GB of RAM.

   As for which version of Office to buy, this is the third time I’ve opted for the Home and Student version (which has had other names in previous releases, but is still being sold for $149). I need Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and this is the most cost-effective way to get those programs. I was disappointed that Microsoft dropped Outlook from the Home and Student version. In order to continue to use Outlook, I installed Outlook 2003 and haven’t had any problems.

   Instead of Outlook, you get OneNote, a program that uses notebooks and tabs to save and organize all sorts of files and documents. I haven’t had much time to play with OneNote yet, but the more I use it, the more impressed I am with it. It looks like one of those programs that you can personalize to meet your own needs and not have to fight with it to get it to do what you want.

   This is a significant upgrade and should allow all users, new and experienced, to work more efficiently and quickly.

2. Review by John Robertson for Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
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   Well, it’s been a week now, and while I still have Office 2002 (virtually identical to 2003) and Office 2007 on my laptop, I’ve pretty much stopped using 2002. I give ’07 a thumbs up.

   I have used Office since 1994 for just simple letters and spreadsheets until the last year, where I started becoming a heavy user of some really odd features, like non-standard line spacing, different headers within the same document, embedded Excel sheets in a Word doc, embedding images in headers and footers, charting, tables, etc. I was worried if all these newly discovered features that I just learned would suddenly disappear in the changing ribbon that everyone was talking about.

   Despite using weird features, or maybe because of it, I am a little more tolerant of looking up how to do things. But I didn’t want to relearn everything, and I haven’t had to. The default blank document has tabs for Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, etc, which really are not much different than the categories in the classic drop-down menus. Once clicking on these tabs, you are offered the same choices as before…charts, insert picture, bookmarks, wordart, etc., and a few new ones, like references, balloons and highlighting, footnotes, and more. It IS a different layout, but to this point, I don’t think it ever took me more than 10 seconds to find something.

   I’m surprised no one is talking about the ability to save documents in .pdf (what was once exclusive to Adobe). I know other software has allowed this for sometime, but the ability to make a document that will launch in Adobe Reader with all the functionality of Word or Excel is something I’ve been waiting for. In 2 years, we’ll all wonder how we did without it. This is important to me because once in .pdf, the formatting is locked in, and won’t change depending on how it’s previewed or printed.

   Another thing that is important is the new, modern looking charts and tables. This isn’t just the ‘pretty’ factor, but more effective to understanding lots of data more easily. Office 2000/2002/2003 just looked old and unimpressive. It’s true that Microsoft is just catching up to Apple, Adobe and others, but they’ve at least done it. Equally important is the ability to instantly see changes to formatting before you’ve committed it to the whole document. I’ve probably wasted a month’s time over the course of the last year reformatting documents to do it a better way. If only I authored them in 2007, which was available a year ago, I would have saved so much time.

   One reviewer said his Home/Student version “did not have all the features as the full version”. I’ve tried to investigate this, and as far as I can tell, Home/Student’s versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint are no different than any other version.

   I don’t want to get too personal here, but all the reviewers who are angry that their saved homework or important business document was saved in .docx and therefore was not readable by anyone else really are just wanting to be victims. Office 2007 makes it abundantly clear that you will be saving in .docx, and if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. It tells you how and where to save it as a compatible .doc file (or .xls, etc.) and whether you want this as your default setting. I’m sorry, but if you’re a student and you ignore all those messages, I think you’re going to have more problems in school than using this version of Office.

   The Grammar check seems to be improved, catching problems that my Office 2002 did not. Hot keys like Ctrl K for hyperlinks or Ctrl C to copy all still work. I’m not sure if they removed others as some reviewers have said, but so far it has not affected me. The concept of Add-Ins (plugins) is a little bit annoying, as to get certain features like the ability to save .pdf requires you go online and install the add-in. Then again, this gives Microsoft the ability to add features from time to time (hopefully they’ll use it that way – I think a big reason for add-ins is to give Microsoft a way of periodically checking your software to ensure it’s legal). I also like the always-on word count, something that Amazon probably wishes I would use in my reviews.

   I’m at day 7 and counting, and I don’t feel much reason to ever open my Office 2002 again.

3. Review by Bleuet for Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
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   This student edition of Microsoft Office 07 comes with four programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Unless you specifically have a need for another Microsoft Office program, this will be more than enough for the average Office user. You’ve got all the essentials: a word processor (Word), a spreadsheet (Excel), a slide show creator (PowerPoint), and even a nice program to put all your notes (OneNote). Home and Student Office 07 version gives you the basic programs at a cheaper price than the other versions of Office.

   The main difference you’ll find between this 07 version and the Microsoft Office 03 is that all the programs now have the “ribbon” instead of being menu-driven. The ribbon is a much more visual representation of all the features you can use. All the different tasks are grouped into ribbons; which are divided up into different tabs you can click on. For example, if you clicked on the “Insert” tab in Word you would find tasks such as “inserting” a header or “inserting” a table. What this means is that instead of being hidden in menus and submenus, most features now can be found simply by being in the right tab. This allows you to find some useful features that you might otherwise not have known existed.

   Everything from Microsoft 03 is there, it just might take awhile to get used to the new layout of things. There are also a lot of cool new features added in this version, such as easily being able to write complex math equations in Word (it was such a pain in Word 03) and being provided with an easy format to create a bibliography in APA, MLA, Chicago style etc.

   Perhaps the only drawback of Office 07 is that it’s such a drastic change from Office 03 that it will take awhile to get used to. After years of knowing all the complex menus you’ll have to learn where everything is all over again, which can be frustrating for vetrans of Office 03. However, if you just give it some time, you’ll fall in love with just how well everything is set up and appreciate the new visual style this version implements.

   Pros:

   * The new visual style allows easy access to all the various features
   
   * You can still save files in Office 97-03 format (Example .doc)

   Cons:

   * You must relearn where everything is because of the Ribbon
   
   * Not all websites/ programs recognize the new 07 files

   Final Recommendation: Buy it, get used to it, and love it!

4. Review by DEM for Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
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   Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 is good software, but be aware of the various types of licence agreements. If you buy it off the shelf (at Amazon.com, for example) then you are licensed for use on up to three computers. HOWEVER, if you purchase a computer with the software PRE-installed, you are only licensed for use on ONE computer. As a mater of fact, you are only licensed to use it on THAT specific computer. If you purchase another computer you CANNOT transfer the license to the other computer. This type of license is caled OEM. In my case I actually paid MORE to have it Pre-installed on my new Dell, and now I can only use it on that one computer. If you are planning to purchase a new computer, you might want to consider purchasing the software separately instead of having it pre-installed. Amazon.com has the lowest price I’ve found so far.

5. Review by Arthur L. Warchol for Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
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   As one who was a newbie to Word I must say the 2007 version has to be much easier to navigate with the new ribbon concept. The biggest trouble for the inexperienced is finding a way to understand all the features. This thing is really complicated to use because it can do so many things. It seems the best way to learn Word would be to take a course in a classroom setting, but for most of us that is not to be. Try to learn from the tutorials and you have to navigate a maze to find them all. I can’t see a neophyte learning all the ins and outs of this program without a third-party teaching tool.

   I have no doubt that if you opt for the full version it is worth the money, as long as you know how to use the program and all its features. I couldn’t afford the whole boat, and didn’t think I needed it anyway, so I opted for this version. That’s when I discovered a disappointment. Not only do you not get the full complement of Office products, you don’t even get a full version of the components per se. For the life of me I can’t remember ever being told in the sales pitch that this would be a pared-down version of Word and wouldn’t even contain all the fonts offered in the full version.

   I had been using the 2007 Beta version and then the Trial version when that expired, and had done some work using the Broadway font, only to find out later that that particular font isn’t even offered in this stripped-down version. Now if I want to match the font I started with I need to go buy it separately for about 20 bucks. Dirty trick.

   Another problem was that I needed tech support to get it to work properly since I had previous versions installed on the puter and they left a couple of files that the developers should have thought to remove when installing the new version but didn’t.

   In short it’s a pretty nifty program all in all, but it’s still Microsoft, and has its foibles and bugs. Be aware that there is a learning curve to get through, but it can be satisfying once you get the hang of it.

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