WildBillm's Full Review: Microsoft Office XP Professional Full Version for ...
If you want to find out what my views on Windows XP Professional, read my epinion:
XPerience Windows - Updated 01/04/02 (read or be hacked)
http://www.epinions.com/content_50099752580
Since anyone could probably write a book on MS Office XP (and many people have), I couldn’t do justice on explaining all of the MS Office XP features in one epinion. So I decided to touch on the features that stood out to me. And if you have read my epinions before, I don’t have a problem of meeting the minimum number of words requirement.
Different Office Suites Available
There are four suites of Office XP to choose from:
(1) MS Office XP standard or standard for students and teachers
-- This contains the word, excel, outlook, and powerpoint applications
(2) MS Office XP professional
-- This contains all the standard applications plus MS Access
(3) MS Office XP professional special addition
-- Same as MS Off Pro plus FrontPage, Share Point Team Services, Publisher, and IntelliMouse Explorer
(4) MS Office XP developer
-- Same as XP Pro plus FrontPage, Share Point Team Services, and developer tools
Why all of the different versions? MS is not known as M$ for nothing. They know how to take what should be some freebie type apps and capitalize on them.
What are all these applications?
Since MS Office has been around since 1995 (I believe this is the correct date), the basic functions of the core applications haven’t really changed. So I will give you a brief summary of all the applications here instead of an in-depth explanation.
(1) MS Word - MS Word is robust word processor application that will let you incorporate a lot of features into your word processing needs. The other major word application that comes close to MS Word is Corel’s WordPerfect. I am familiar with both products and do prefer Word because of some features such as the Drawing tools. This allows you to do CallOuts which are like cartoon bubbles that you can use in documentation that will allow you to bring emphasis to particular areas of your document.
(2) MS Excel - This is a spreadsheet application which is used, of course, to create spreadsheets and tables. Spreadsheets are nice when you have to organize data that you need to analysis. I want to mention what I believe to be a problem that many office people make. They create complex tables in MS Word and get frustrated when they can’t manipulate the data like they think they should. I try to explain to these people tables and spreadsheets should never be done in word or in WordPerfect. They should be done in MS Excel or Corel’s spreadsheet application, QuattroPro. These people try to explain to me that they want this spreadsheet or table in a report. I then reply you need to create your table in Excel or QuattroPro, then highlight, copy and paste into your Word or WordPerfect document. Just my two cents.
(3) MS Outlook - This is not just a email type program. It is almost a personal assistant on your desktop. You can send email, store calendar events, store meetings with a timer, create electronic post it notes, and maintain a personal journal. It is a very powerful tool. However; MS Outlook also has a number security holes. How? It allows viruses attached to emails to infect your computer. There are more viruses that infect computers with MS Outlook than any other email application. At my office, we use GroupWise (Corel’s version of Outlook) and all of problems you can have with MS Outlook you really don’t have with Groupwise. The biggest problem is the concept of visual basic scripts that can run in MS applications.
(4) MS PowerPoint - This is of course a presentation application. This allows you to create, manipulate, and animate different slides that you can use in any type of computer based presentation. Corel’s version is Corel Presentations. I have personally never seen this particular Corel product, so I can’t tell you if it is better or not.
(5) MS Access - This is MS object oriented desktop database program. It is a pretty powerful desktop database that can be used to create very complex database programs. Another personal opinion of mine is for people who can make a MS Access database. Just because you can make a MS Access database doesn’t make you a programmer. I have run into many people who have dabbled with other database programs, write several MS Access databases and call themselves programmers. Just a word of advice, don’t go telling people with Computer Science degrees and/or people with years of C+, C++, pascal, cobol, and other programming languages that you are a programmer because they will either laugh at you or never listen to anything you have to say again. This is what I have personally seen. If you are wondering, I am not a programmer nor do I have a computer science degree.
The other applications - I am not really going to go into any detail about the other programs. You can go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/default.asp to find out more about these particular products.
Likes ---Smart Tag
This is a nice new feature that is actually pretty handy. It basically is a new little pop up that allows you to utilize a new feature or just ignore it. Here are two examples of smart tags that I personally enjoy.
(1) Paste Option Smart Tag – When you paste anything in one of the office products such as Word or Excel, you get a little picture of a clipboard that appears. Anyone familiar with MS Office knows the clipboard represents the paste option. You can choose to ignore this picture or click on it and it will give you four options
a.) Keep source formatting – This allows you to keep the type of formatting such as font, font size, color, etc of the text you are copying from.
b.) Match destination formatting – This is my personal favorite. It allows you to copy text from a completely different document with crazy formatting and it allows you to use the font, font size, color of the document you are already typing in. It is my favorite because when I usually copy something from the internet, I would usually have to change the font and font size to match my document and now I don’t.
c.) Keep text only – This feature of course is pretty self explanatory. It will paste only the text.
d.) Apply style for text formatting – This is an interesting feature in the paste options that I don’t necessarily use myself, but I can see it being useful. When you choose this, it opens the Task Pane on the right side of the document and allows you to choose the type of preconfigured style of your choice.
(2) AutoCorrection Option Smart Tag – This tag looks like a little white underline symbol underneath the first letter of what MS has autocorrected. I believe it only appears if you hit the backspace after an auto correction has been performed. This feature allows you to undo one of the auto corrections and turn off the type of auto corrections without having to go through all of the menus.
---Speech Recognition
This is another feature that I can see definitely helping people who have problems with their hands such as arthritic people. This particular feature will let you perform various commands as well as dictate. One thing that needs to be mentioned about this particular feature is that it does require training your computer to recognize your voice. I do not personally use this feature because I believe it is easier to type.
DisLikes ---Activation - Just like Windows XP Operating System, you need to activate your product. This can be done either by internet or by phone. My recommendation is doing this by phone so that you can write down your activation number. Why? If for some reason you have to reinstall this product you will have to call again for reactivation. If you wrote it down, you can just use the same activation and not bother wasting your time holding on the telephone waiting to talk to a MS employee. Why do I dislike activation? It is a poor attempt at software protection. It penalizes the legitimate customers. A person who acquires a pirated version will most likely have a version hat has the activation portion of the code taken out of the product by some savvy programmer. So in the end you have the pirated copy being easier to use than a legitimate copy.
---Annoying Task Pane - This is a new feature in Office XP that is utilized to help the user. I don’t particularly care for this feature. Another reason I don’t like it is that I am an expert in the use of MS Office products (I use to teach MS Office classes to the employees at a hospital I use to work at). I don’t like new features crammed down my throat. This Task Pane takes up about an in of the right side of my screen minimizing my document typing area. I don’t mind after the first time the program has been used if it would ask me if I would like this feature turned on or off depending on my level of expertise. Of course MS does not like to ask people anything. They believe they know what is best for you. So if this pane bothers you as well, you can turn it off in Word and Excel by:
-- Single left Click Tools, Choose Options, and uncheck “Startup Task Pane”
---Poor Help Screens for the Advanced User - This may just be me, but I seem to never find the solution to a task I would like to perform in the help menus. I believe this help menu is to help the new users to Office products with the basic features of MS Office applications. If you are an advanced user who is looking for particular uses of advanced features like me, you too will usually have to go to the web and find a forum or website where people have written helpful howtos for advanced type users.
What about the other Office XP features?
There are a number of other features that MS Office XP offers that I have not mentioned. Here is a link to find out the comparison of Office products: http://www.microsoft.com/office/evaluation/indepth/compare.htm
Conclusion
Overall, MS Office XP is a great suite of applications. Is there enough newness to justify upgrading at its current price? I don’t think so. I personally wouldn’t pay the price of this suite to upgrade from 2000 or from Office 97. The only reason I have is because it came with my new Dell desktop at work. If you can get your office to upgrade, it has a nicer feel, but since it is a new MS product just means there are a set of problems that haven’t yet been discovered.
If you want to find out what my views on Windows XP Professional, read my epinion:
XPerience Windows - Updated 01/04/02 (read or be hacked)
http://www.epinions.com/content_50099752580
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 is the most complete personal and business productivity solution that enables people to manage customers an...More at eBay
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