Andrez -

Unfortunately the flaps over Vista seem to have obscured any significant amount of discussion of Office 2007 - and the Office version was released for WinXP several months before Vista really came on the scene, so discussion is "old news."

Microsoft has obviously assumed that all users are complete idiots, so in true professional fashion they assembled a team of idiots to "re-create" Office. Since the only ones with the "voice" to pass on comment on what they've done are mostly magazine editors, those talking about Office seem to be quite happy with it. (Hint: the implied comment about editors is my own opinion(?))

It's only the few of us who actually used advanced functions in older Office programs - especially Word - who are unable to make it work. I get by just by using the shortcut keys that I remember from older versions, and there are still a few things that I do fairly often that work in Office 2007 - using the now unpublished shortcuts - that I cannot find anywhere in the new menu "system."

If your office manager wants his/her people to waste all their time reading the chatty little descriptions of trivial functions that can be found in the hundreds of pretty icons, instead of clicking a couple of times on well-known simple menus, then Office 2007 is definitely the program to have. If the productive output of the crew is of some significance, then Office 2007 is a complete loser.

Unfortunately, I was forced to switch to Office 2007 because Microsoft OS updates made my previous Office 2002 non-functional. Well known functions gradually "ceased to function." Office 2003 is at "end of life" and the same effect may be expected soon, so there may soon be little choice about "upgrading" to 2007.

John