PSA to IT admins: don't upgrade to Office 2007 in crunch time

[Howard]

Originally posted by: JLee

Originally posted by: SacrosanctFiend

Originally posted by: JLee
I like Office 2007..

How often do you have to use it in your line of work?

I love Word 2007, though..used it in school and the automatic works cited stuff is epic.

QFMFT

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: RichUK
- Does Office 2007 actually provide more functionality over 2003 ? in the sense of enabling you as the individual to work more efficiently / the organisation to operate more effectively?

in MS:Word? Definitely.

in excel? nope.

 

[Dualist]

Too late, I installed MS Office 2007 for my home PC a year ago but I only use Word 2007.

 

[arcenite]

Originally posted by: Aves

Originally posted by: Scouzer
At work:

1) We still use Office 97
2) We upgraded from Windows NT to Windows XP last year
3) My mailbox is 40mb
4) Our shared work connection is 300kbps

I'm really not worried that they'll be upgrading anything anytime soon.

:thumbsdown:

:shocked:

 

[foghorn67]

I think 2007 rocks. It's actually been getting a decent reception at my place.

 

[Danman]

So...you should of ThinApp'd Office 2007 for pilot testing before rolling it out. That's what I've been doing for several clients.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Fayd

Originally posted by: RichUK
- Does Office 2007 actually provide more functionality over 2003 ? in the sense of enabling you as the individual to work more efficiently / the organisation to operate more effectively?

in MS:Word? Definitely.

in excel? nope.

Wrong. Excel definitely has new features. Maybe you don't use them, but they exist. A lot of the basic functionality didn't change because it was already very good, but a lot of advanced things did.

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Fayd

Originally posted by: RichUK
- Does Office 2007 actually provide more functionality over 2003 ? in the sense of enabling you as the individual to work more efficiently / the organisation to operate more effectively?

in MS:Word? Definitely.

in excel? nope.

Wrong. Excel definitely has new features. Maybe you don't use them, but they exist. A lot of the basic functionality didn't change because it was already very good, but a lot of advanced things did.

Like?

I can get the entire office 2007 package and charge it to my project if I wanted, but there?s no benefit from what I can see.

 

[Nik]

If your company is managing the budget in a damn spreadsheet, they're probably too small to be affected by something so simple anyway.

 

[Syringer]

Originally posted by: RichUK

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Fayd

Originally posted by: RichUK
- Does Office 2007 actually provide more functionality over 2003 ? in the sense of enabling you as the individual to work more efficiently / the organisation to operate more effectively?

in MS:Word? Definitely.

in excel? nope.

Wrong. Excel definitely has new features. Maybe you don't use them, but they exist. A lot of the basic functionality didn't change because it was already very good, but a lot of advanced things did.

Like?

I can get the entire office 2007 package and charge it to my project if I wanted, but there?s no benefit from what I can see.

A few things that I use on a daily basis that previous Excels don't have are:

-One click remove duplicates
-Add more than two levels of sorting
-More than 65k rows which has been *very* crucial at times
-More options in creating pivot tables

I use Excel everyday but probably don't use it to the extent that some here use it, but it certainly makes life easier..

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: Syringer

Originally posted by: RichUK

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: Fayd

Originally posted by: RichUK
- Does Office 2007 actually provide more functionality over 2003 ? in the sense of enabling you as the individual to work more efficiently / the organisation to operate more effectively?

in MS:Word? Definitely.

in excel? nope.

Wrong. Excel definitely has new features. Maybe you don't use them, but they exist. A lot of the basic functionality didn't change because it was already very good, but a lot of advanced things did.

Like?

I can get the entire office 2007 package and charge it to my project if I wanted, but there?s no benefit from what I can see.

A few things that I use on a daily basis that previous Excels don't have are:

-One click remove duplicates
-Add more than two levels of sorting
-More than 65k rows which has been *very* crucial at times
-More options in creating pivot tables

I use Excel everyday but probably don't use it to the extent that some here use it, but it certainly makes life easier..

If you?re talking about autofilters, then that certainly is an improvement in functionality!

I?ve had no issue with the current functionality of pivot tables thus far.

Still not worth the cost, though. I?m thinking about getting Project 2007 as the license is only £300 and I have budget for that.

 

[Scouzer]

Originally posted by: blanghorst

Originally posted by: Scouzer
At work:

1) We still use Office 97
2) We upgraded from Windows NT to Windows XP last year
3) My mailbox is 40mb
4) Our shared work connection is 300kbps

I'm really not worried that they'll be upgrading anything anytime soon.

Good lord, how big is your company?

5200 people but my office is 6 people. This is our computer setup:

1) Print Server - XP
2) General Office PC - XP
3) Two Operational PCs - DOS
4) Operational PC - Windows NT
5) Operational PC - Linux

and the general PC is still running IE6 which annoys me more than any of the other issues

 

[XZeroII]

I like Office 2007 a lot. Much easier to use than 2003 once you get used to it.

 

[Train]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
At work:

1) We still use Office 97
2) We upgraded from Windows NT to Windows XP last year
3) My mailbox is 40mb
4) Our shared work connection is 300kbps

I'm really not worried that they'll be upgrading anything anytime soon.

wtf, is Office 97 even still supported? My company is worried because we still have a few Windows 2000 servers live. Win2k support runs out July 2010

 

[Evadman]

That is a retarded change.

 

[KMFJD]

Originally posted by: mb
2007 > 2003

silly noobs.

Try saying that when you are limited to 1gb of ram....slow as mollases....

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally posted by: Scouzer

Originally posted by: blanghorst

Originally posted by: Scouzer
At work:

1) We still use Office 97
2) We upgraded from Windows NT to Windows XP last year
3) My mailbox is 40mb
4) Our shared work connection is 300kbps

I'm really not worried that they'll be upgrading anything anytime soon.

Good lord, how big is your company?

5200 people but my office is 6 people. This is our computer setup:

1) Print Server - XP
2) General Office PC - XP
3) Two Operational PCs - DOS
4) Operational PC - Windows NT
5) Operational PC - Linux

and the general PC is still running IE6 which annoys me more than any of the other issues

Are all 5200 people using Office 97? Did they all just get upgraded to XP last year?

I guessed you worked for a manufacturing company of some sort with your initial description, and from your latest comments (operational PCs), sounds like I might be right. I worked for a manufacturing company for a few years and they were incredibly cheap. They were on Office 97 until 2006 (when the last site was upgraded), and I thought that was bad. With that company, you spent more time and money justifying, rejustifying, triple justifying, and quadruple justifying than if you just went out and did the project in the first place.

 

[sourceninja]

I love how people say they can't move to open office because it breaks their documents, then move to office 2007 which...breaks their documents. Only they paid for that one.

 

[Jadow]

Excel 2007 has about a 2 week learning/getting used to curve.

After that, it's like Heaven compared to 2003.

The new menu system, better pivot tables, no 65,000 row limit, sort by cell color, etc... are some great enhancements.

Edit- Also, yeah crazy to push it all out like that. We're upgrading to it, but only when people get replacements PCs or they ask for it.

 

[Fear No Evil]

I work for one of the largest companies in the world (THE largest by some/most accounts). We still run Office 2000 (Although we use Outlook 2003). I have no issues doing my job with that combination. It can also be a significant cost savings to skip several versions when you are a huge company (100's of thousands of employees). I think the ripple effect of this is that when you have huge companies refusing to update, they force their vendors, suppliers, partners, etc also from upgrading or at least keep them using old formats.

I think many of those who say there is no reason not to upgrade have never worked in a large enterprise environment. The logistics of rolling out new versions to hundreds of thousands of desktops or 10's of thousands of servers is quite daunting, especially when budgets are slashed and staff is just able to keep things running. Upgrades become less of a priority than just keeping things working smoothly. While it may be 'fun' to upgrade to Windows 7 and Server 2008 when you are a small shop, there is nothing fun about it in larger environments. There is a reason why MS will support OS's for 10 years+, because many companies fully intend on running them for that long.

 

[lokiju]

Heres a way to make it look like office 2003.

http://blogs.pcworld.com/tipsa...s/archives/005682.html

 

[skace]

2007 is great. However I mainly love it for Outlook 2007, which is an amazing upgrade to Outlook 2003.

 

[drum]

You can't just make a change like that without any kind of training. Training, of course, is not the job of the IT department

 

[Gunbuster]

I like 2K7 but the upgrade is BRUTAL slow. Install, patch, patch some more...

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: drum
You can't just make a change like that without any kind of training. Training, of course, is not the job of the IT department

Right. Lots of companies don't even budget training of this nature. Which is where the problem stems from usually. However, it should be noticed that 2007 has some really good help files. I'd expect my work force to self educate to some level, that's like the basic minimum.