Office 2007 – First Impressions

For a few weeks now, I have been playing around with Office 2007 Beta.  I have to say, the new design is starting to grow on me.  I am sure it will be difficult for a while for people to navigate the new interface, but I don’t think it will take all that long for the average user to be come accustom to the new design.

Outlook is probably the most important of all the products in the Office Suite simply because it handles all your tasks and communications.  While Outlook’s interface hasn’t changed much, I do like the small differences that do exist.  I think the best part of the new Outlook interface is that on one screen, I can see my email, upcoming appointments and tasks.  In previous versions, I would have to open two windows to accomplish this.

One issue with Outlook is speed.  When you first setup Outlook, it is very, very slow.  This is because Outlook is going through all your email and cataloging it to make it faster for searching.   Once this has been completed, Outlook’s performance does pickup, but it is still a bit slow.

Now, in all fairness to Microsoft, I am using Beta code.  Once the final release is available to me, I am sure my opinion about Outlook’s speed will change.  But overall, I have to say that I am pleased with the new version with Office 2007.  Let’s see if I continue to say that after I start supporting it for our end users.

What’s your opinion?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.