For those that do not know it yet, Microsoft has released a public beta of Office Vista.
This beta will last until Feb 1 2007, which seems long enough for me.

Get the beta here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

First thing that comes into mind : the design changed. And great it is. While in Word many options are hidden/stashed away (one could accidentally trigger a different viewing format with keyboard shortcuts and not know how to change it), they're organized here.


The insert tab makes it much easier and faster to maintain a document
http://users.skynet.be/alegis/office2.jpg
A bug here though was that if you customized your installation and removed clip arts, it will keep spamming the error in the insert tab.
Insert shapes, or mathematical symbols and equations with ease.

http://users.skynet.be/alegis/office3.jpg
Instead of digging into an options window with several tabs, it's all "within" the document.

Spelling check just got better with contextual spelling checks. Rather than just checking the spelling of each word seperately, it will attempt to find words that are used in a wrong context.


The new design makes it easier to work with, yet nothing THAT great if you're already quite advanced with XP. The graphical improvements come with a minor performance decrement when resizing the window, noticeable, but not grave.

Powerpoint though has a new feature called SmartArt. You can right click a bulleted list and get more advanced looking lists which again are very customizable and another way of displaying your data.

I really like this feature as the lists are pretty.

Excel looks just like the same as Word, and improvements are once again minor. There is a new listing feature where you can only show certain queries (like you would with an SQL database), Conditional Formatting feature. The other improvements (tables are what used to be lists) aren't really noticeable at first.

The other programs I couldn't be bothered with atm. All in all, it's mostly an interface change which should be a great relief for those inexperienced with the menus. Those advanced, well the powerpoint thing does add something, the other additions to Word and Excel don't and probably wouldn't make you switch from whatever you're using atm.

However, beta is free and until feb 2007. It is worth a try, only downside is that it's beta and not stable on some systems (may not install).

The install file is HUGE (all=1.5gb) , but customizable. Converters and filters, Insert equations, more silly popart, proofing tools, themes, Visual Basic for applications, fonts ...

The version i d'loaded 3 days ago was just 440MB .. it was called Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2007. Anyways the rest of the softwares that come under the Office Beta banner are:

QUOTE

Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2007
Microsoft® Office Visio® Professional 2007
Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager
Microsoft® Office Project Server 2007
Microsoft® Office Project Professional 2007
Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007
Microsoft® Office Groove® Server 2007
Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007
Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Designer 2007
Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 - Enterprise
Microsoft® Office Forms Server 2007
Microsoft® Windows SharePoint Services

I D'loaded most of them, but havent installed yet .. scares me to death when it comes to "beta" by microsoft. But unless i hear from reviews that this version of beta can save files in a format that can be opened by Office 2003, only then would i go ahead and install and recommend. Cause therz no point using it and people not being able to take advantage of it.

Newayz, incase u tried it, please do let us know if a new file saved in Office 2007 could be opened in Office 2003.

Regards
Dhanesh.

Incidentally, did you know that MS has decided to call the new Office as 2007 Microsoft Office system (notice the lowercase 's'). Reason's behind this new nomenclature are unknown and pretty much open to speculations.

However, if you get the drift of public opinion - it's going to be quite hard to get people to call it by the new name and NOT simply Office 2007.

It looks like microsoft has gone out of its way in providing the best graphics, so you really do need a good pc to run it i guess. My old pc even struggled a bit on office 2003 (It was a 1ghz celeron).

Looks like once 2007 is released we might need to learn where everything is again and what all these shortcuts do.

It also looks like microsoft wants to create an online development environment by bundling servers with the respective products. What if you only need the programs for offline use?

-HellFire

Yes a lot of those products have an online feature in some way. If you merely work offline, you just don't install them. The suite is quite big, and will have lots of stuff you may not need.

Shortcuts are the same and the menu tab is easy to get used to. The bigger your screen, the more can fit in those bars so you dont have to click on the "submenus" for a little pop-up window (like the » in 2003).
When a submenu has an option window, it has the expand window icon in the bottom right corner of its box in the tab.

You can also customize the quick-access toolbar to go back to the old (2003) way, or add/remove buttons (or customize the keyboard shortcuts).

Screenie:


The Add-Ins feature is like an extensions tab. This could add some nifty features.

Word also has a lot of new diagrams, with Smart-Art like I mentioned earlier for Powerpoint.



Good question, in case of Word - you can save documents in various formats. A new one being .docx
Smart-art saved in .docx is still editable, however when saved to .doc the smart-art object will "degrade" itself to an image; so you can't edit the text any longer.
Office XP can't open .docx. I assume once 2007 is out an update for older versions will be released to handle the new coding, but I don't think it's wise to save files in .docx anyways, smart objects are easily made. The .docx I made was smaller of course, (90kb vs 80kb for pure text, 57kb vs 17kb with a document with smart objects) but since other versions can't handle that 'codec' yet...

To answer the question, my other system running Office XP had no troubles opening the .doc . Bear in mind though that the nice new default font of Word vista (Calibri) won't be recognised so unless it has the font installed, it will look slightly different

When you install the beta you can choose to upgrade your previous office system, or leave it be and install 2007 MS Office system next to it. It is a beta after all, and I know of at least one other person where it wouldn't install.

I've tried it, and posted my experiences with it in another thread, which sad to say i can't find, and i can't find any button that allows me to review all my posts. so anyways, to answer this particular question, yes, you can save it in a compatible format. you can set the defaults to save automatically in whatever format you prefer. this version of office supports saving to pdf and xml, in addition to other open formats like rtf. then there's the office2000-2003 "save as" version as well.

what do you know. I found it: http://www.astahost.com/page-5-t8059-s40.html

This post has been edited by Grafitti: May 28 2006, 03:00 PM