I'm looking forward to Windows 7 though. They put the guy who did Office 2007 in charge of Windows though, so that should be good news (I love Office 2007 and I think it's one of the best updates to Office ever).
850*77.1=100,000
Huge productivity suite ships with minor, promptly fixed bug -- news at 11
Azio on
0
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited December 2007
I know what a citation is. It's basically a number in superscript and a footnote with that number and a reference. In OO it's Insert:Footnote. Very simple. I think it's essentially the same in Office 2000. You use them extensively in english class.
I hardly think multiplying wrong counts as a minor bug. In a spreadsheet app, especially. Considering spreadsheets have been around since the 70's.
But it's just a joke. The chances of someone actually hitting that bug is fairly small, but you have to admit it's pretty hilarious.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I'm looking forward to Windows 7 though. They put the guy who did Office 2007 in charge of Windows though, so that should be good news (I love Office 2007 and I think it's one of the best updates to Office ever).
850*77.1=100,000
Huge productivity suite ships with minor, promptly fixed bug -- news at 11
To be fair, that sort of error is a huge embarrassment for Microsoft, because important people use it for important things having to do with money and such, so it's absolutely critical that the correct values are calculated and displayed. This sort of thing isn't as show-stopping for OpenOffice or Numbers or Google Spreadsheets because real businesses don't use them yet.
Although, in the case of this error, the calculations were performed correctly, it's just that it didn't display the right number.
I know what a citation is. It's basically a number in superscript and a footnote with that number and a reference. In OO it's Insert:Footnote. Very simple. I think it's essentially the same in Office 2000.
If you used Office 2007, you'd see the functionality is much better than Insert:Footnote. You can add your sources and keep them in a list, and easily and use them to make citations. Office 2007 will even create a self-updating list of Works Cited or References at the end of the document. It's really very nice.
Dont' tell me I'm generalizing Linux/Ubuntu. I've been using linux at least part time since Fedora Core 1. I've used Fedora, SUSE, I've also tried slackware, and Gentoo. I've been running ubuntu on my laptop for 2 years now, going back to 5.10. I think that I have a very broad view of what linux distrobutions can, and cannot do. And I am saying flat out, that I would not give an ubuntu install to my Grandmother. I do agree that Ubuntu, and all distros in general have made absolutely massive strides in usability, and that they get better all the time, but they are by no means ready for joe consumer to use yet.
The main reason I say that is there is no *official* support for a lot of peripherals. yes, I know that you can use your iPod, printer, scanner and camera and whatnot in a linux distro most of the time, but the drivers/software is written/developed/maintained by a community of people who do it because they want to. That, in my opinion, is not sustainable in the mass market. As sad as it sounds, until you can Run iTunes officially(again, not in Wine or anything) in Linux, or be able to install a program like quicken, or have offical support for all web plugins like activeX, Desktop linux will never, ever be ready for the mainstream. As shitty as a lot of bundled software is with things like cameras/scanners, guess what, 95% of people use them, and dont' want to give them up. That, is a fact, and one that will not change.
That is why Desktop linux will never hit mainstream.
Re: Office 2007. We've switched to it in our company, and after about 2 day of of grumbling most people ended up liking it, and I've had more than a few comments about how much easier it is to use. Honestly, I think office 07 is the best version of office since office 97, because MS was not afraid to throw out all the things that were staples in previous versions to make Office better. It's like the Jump from OS9 to OS X. There was a lot of resistance to it at first, but now, can you imagine going back to OS 9 on a regular basis? Office will be the same way.
I know what a citation is. It's basically a number in superscript and a footnote with that number and a reference. In OO it's Insert:Footnote. Very simple. I think it's essentially the same in Office 2000.
If you used Office 2007, you'd see the functionality is much better than Insert:Footnote. You can add your sources and keep them in a list, and easily and use them to make citations. Office 2007 will even create a self-updating list of Works Cited or References at the end of the document. It's really very nice.
Also, footnotes and citations are different.
Yes. A citation is a footnote which contains a reference to some other work. Like a book or something.
And that seems like cheating. Isn't the whole point of english class to learn what is and is not supposed to go in a paper like that?
But, yeh. I can see how that could be useful if you write a lot of academic papers.
After looking for a few seconds it looks like OO has a Bibliography Database. Seems to be essentially the same thing.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
You are literally the only person I have ever encountered with such irrational hate for the start menu. It's really not that bad. In Vista it's actually better than ever before. Again if you (or your grandparents, whatever) have so much difficulty navigating a hierarchical folder tree then for the umpteenth time use the Search box, or just put shortcuts on your desktop. Or download Launchy. Other solutions exist, although you should still get used to hierarchical folder trees because they're a UI paradigm that appears in some way on virtually every computer operating system ever made. If you think switching to another operating system would free you of folder trees then you are very wrong.
I think it is obvious you've never used MacOS 7 or Windows 3.x. In Windows 3.0 there was the Program Manager, it was a very nice launcher that only contained shortcuts to executable files and displayed those as a 16x16 icon. When a program was installed it would add an item to a group (Accessories or Games or something) and would be available from then on in Program Manager. Most installers didn't bother adding anything to the Program Manager besides an item for the executable itself. System 7 had the Launcher which just provided buttons for every item dragged into the window. Like the Program Manager it was pretty simple but effective. Instead of properly extending these concepts the start menu ended up being a bad clone of the System 7 Apple Menu. Stop harping about the fucking search box already. Search is a nice feature to have in Vista but it is not 100% reliable nor is it something my grandparents should have to rely on. The general application launcher ought to look like the "Games" folder rather than a list of nested folders with tiny icons.
I completely agree that Vista was designed for Microsoft rather than home users or even institutional buyers like schools and businesses. For every useful feature they added they seemed to have added another wizard to the OS. I do not think that a task based OS is friendly to anyone. Wizards are text adventures that change system settings, the only really ask you questions and don't suggest useful options to you. The OS should just have sane defaults and do as much for you as possible.
The firewall in Windows XP was extremely difficult to use for anyone not versed in the ways of Windows. In SP2 they made it a Control Panel item with a much improved interface, you could turn it on and off in the primary tab and added options were available in the other tabs. Right on the front tab it links to some documentation about the firewall. This is a great model for a lot of other services on Windows. The first interface should be as simple as possible and make a bunch of assumptions, turn something on or off and tell you why you might want to do that. Extra options can be accessed through other widgets in that control panel. This is a far better route than adding wizards all over the place to hide confusing or outright hidden dialog boxes.
This is one of the biggest areas I think Vista was screwed up. Wizards only hide existing dialogs and controls rather than replacing them with sane less confusing versions. The firewall in XP didn't really change between SP1 and SP2 but the controlling interface did and made it much more useful. I don't need to see all of the wireless networks signal strengths by default, I just want to see if my wireless network is available and connect to it. Some of these UI faux pas might be fixed in SP1 on Vista but probably not. There's a culture at Microsoft that allows bad UI decisions to be made and then flourish. The UIs that make it through various developer/marketing committees don't get vetted by some central UI czar and can usually make it into shipping products.
After looking for a few seconds it looks like OO has a Bibliography Database. Seems to be essentially the same thing.
It's not out yet. As usual, they're just copying what Office does so it's not surprising that it's essentially the same.
When will this wonderful facility be available ? Development work for Bibliographic enhancements to OpenOffice is expected to commence from late 2007, and probably available for users in OpenOffice version 2.x/3.x (mid-late 2008 ???) see feature timeline. Also see a blog on plans for Writer.
Another benefit of leadership from Office coming to the Windows division is that hopefully things will actually happen according to schedule. Office 2007 came out on time (I think?) and they even released Office 2007 SP1 early.
Hopefully Steven Sinofsky (the Office 2007 guy who is now in control of Windows) can bring at least some of the same discipline to Windows. Actually, there are rumours out there that all the features for Windows 7 have been 'locked down' already (as much as can be), so maybe they really are going to be more disciplined about it than in Windows Vista development.
Zoolander on
0
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited December 2007
Say what you will about linux as a desktop solution (I don't use it as a desktop. Oh hell no. ) but I wouldn't expose a windows box directly to the internet for love nor money, "firewall" or not. cheap routers are cheap. At the very least you can do what I do, which is to say, install linux (no gui) on a Pentium 1 box (which are essentially free), through a couple of ethernet cards in, configure iptables, and leave it be.
All the windows firewall does is give me one more thing I have to turn off in a fresh XP install.
After looking for a few seconds it looks like OO has a Bibliography Database. Seems to be essentially the same thing.
It's not out yet. As usual, they're just copying what Office does so it's not surprising that it's essentially the same.
When will this wonderful facility be available ? Development work for Bibliographic enhancements to OpenOffice is expected to commence from late 2007, and probably available for users in OpenOffice version 2.x/3.x (mid-late 2008 ???) see feature timeline. Also see a blog on plans for Writer.
That's weird because I found out about it by opening OO and looking in the menu, and it is right there.
Considering it's free I'm surprised they can even keep up with MS.
That page must be out of date, it is in OO 2.3
And what is wrong with copying? You just said it was a good feature.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I really love Vista and think it's a great direction for Windows... but I'm a rebel like that.
You see, I was totally expecting, from the general vibe of the internet, to be horribly disgusted with it, but after actually poking at it, I am simply neutral. Essentially I see nothing that would warrant the effort of reinstalling, but if I had to reinstall, and i had a copy of it lying around, and I had 2Gb of ram... sure. Why not. It doesn't seem any worse than XP, maybe a bit slower, but nothing like how XP hit the brakes compared to 2000.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
The main reason I say that is there is no *official* support for a lot of peripherals. yes, I know that you can use your iPod, printer, scanner and camera and whatnot in a linux distro most of the time, but the drivers/software is written/developed/maintained by a community of people who do it because they want to. That, in my opinion, is not sustainable in the mass market. As sad as it sounds, until you can Run iTunes officially(again, not in Wine or anything) in Linux, or be able to install a program like quicken, or have offical support for all web plugins like activeX, Desktop linux will never, ever be ready for the mainstream. As shitty as a lot of bundled software is with things like cameras/scanners, guess what, 95% of people use them, and dont' want to give them up. That, is a fact, and one that will not change.
This I can mostly agree with, especially the hardware support. That said, there is nothing wrong with drivers and software being "written/developed/maintained" by the community. The problem is that the community isn't getting support from the manufacturers, particularly with regards to documentation/specifications for the hardware.
Some companies like Intel (surprisingly enough) are doing pretty good, especially with regards to their video and wireless drivers. Ralink provides open source drivers for their chipsets, and the community is almost to the point where their implementation of those drivers can be submitted for inclusion with the mainline kernel. It is the peripheral companies that are largely useless.
I don't agree with the need for ActiveX controls. Plugins exist with non-ActiveX versions for Mozilla/Firefox users, but they don't work under Linux for other reasons. ActiveX is just another name for [OLE] Automation, and is a Microsoft standard for IPC.
Honestly, other than Flash I'm not sure how many plugins are really needed for your browser. I know there are exceptional exceptions such as some country whose name I can't remember that had to develop a plugin for online bank transactions because of cryptography export restrictions, but still...the Totem/Mplayer plugins will play virtually every file format out there and basically usurps the functionality of QuickTime/WMP. Unless you play the free version of Bewjeweled or something I can't think of a reason for someone to install something other than Flash or maybe Java (applets are retarded, and online shit is more likely to use WebStart). Everything else is most likely malware.
With regards to bundled software...well, I think they are mostly shit and should die. I'm not talking about the people who already used to the crap and don't want to change (which a lot of people don't like), but for people who already have a computer than came with Ubuntu (since Dell sells them) it shouldn't be necessary. A good scanner/printer/camera interface that comes standard would be perfect.
None of my family members has found Canon's software (Zoombrowser) to be terribly usable. In fact, they just use the SD card slot on their PC and copy pictures off of it that way instead of using it. And there is Picasa for everything else.
That said, I'm letting this die here since it is offtopic.
It doesn't seem any worse than XP, maybe a bit slower, but nothing like how XP hit the brakes compared to 2000.
I didn't think XP was slower than 2000, but I had a sufficient amount of RAM back then. If you had at least 512 MB it probably wouldn't be noticeable unless you had a bunch of software open or a memory hog like Photoshop. I had first used XP through a MSDN subscription, but I can't remember the version number. The boot logo still said "Whistler" on it, though.
The only machines I've [momentarily] used Vista on had 512 MB and 1 GB of memory in them. They both felt somewhat sluggish, but the 512 was outright irritating to use.
At least RAM is a lot cheaper these days.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
0
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
The only machines I've [momentarily] used Vista on had 512 MB and 1 GB of memory in them. They both felt somewhat sluggish, but the 512 was outright irritating to use.
At least RAM is a lot cheaper these days.
ya, that's pretty much your problem right there. I would not run Vista on less than 2GB. 1GB would be the abolute minimum. just like with XP, when 512 woudl be the absolute minimum I would run it on, and 1GB is preferred for smooth operation.
The only machines I've [momentarily] used Vista on had 512 MB and 1 GB of memory in them. They both felt somewhat sluggish, but the 512 was outright irritating to use.
At least RAM is a lot cheaper these days.
ya, that's pretty much your problem right there. I would not run Vista on less than 2GB. 1GB would be the abolute minimum. just like with XP, when 512 woudl be the absolute minimum I would run it on, and 1GB is preferred for smooth operation.
Oh, I'm not saying it was on my PCs. These didn't belong to me. I could understand someone thinking that Vista ran like ass if it were installed it on OEM machines that were manufactured prior to the Vista Capable stickers came about, and even those "Vista Capable" machines frequently had half a gig of RAM in them.
It is like how I frequently consider "recommended specifications" on games to be the true minimum specs if you don't want it to run/look like shit. Vista Capable machines are only required to have 512 MB, but the Premium Ready (the recommended specs) are 1 GB.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
The only machines I've [momentarily] used Vista on had 512 MB and 1 GB of memory in them. They both felt somewhat sluggish, but the 512 was outright irritating to use.
At least RAM is a lot cheaper these days.
ya, that's pretty much your problem right there. I would not run Vista on less than 2GB. 1GB would be the abolute minimum. just like with XP, when 512 woudl be the absolute minimum I would run it on, and 1GB is preferred for smooth operation.
Oh, I'm not saying it was on my PCs. These didn't belong to me. I could understand someone thinking that Vista ran like ass if it were installed it on OEM machines that were manufactured prior to the Vista Capable stickers came about, and even those "Vista Capable" machines frequently had half a gig of RAM in them.
It is like how I frequently consider "recommended specifications" on games to be the true minimum specs if you don't want it to run/look like shit. Vista Capable machines are only required to have 512 MB, but the Premium Ready (the recommended specs) are 1 GB.
ya, "capable" doesn't really mean it'll run well. Vista "capable" pretty much means that Vista will install and boot, it doesn't specify how good it will be.
When my RAM died about 2 months ago, I threw an old 512 Stick of ram I had into my system. And Vista was pretty much unusable. Even with 1GB, it was not fun to run Vista for the week while I waited for my RMA to come in.
I work with one single software: Word 2007.
I love it VERY hard. It's the best word processor ever. I tried OO, and ran away disgusted with its 1995 interface. I like software with pretty AND useful interfaces. I have to look at them the whole day.
BTW, the new office interface is actually a lot SMALLER than the previous one, because it stays HIDDEN 99% of the tima, and is one click away the remaining 1%.
As far as Word 2007 goes, my first impressions were that of disgust, mainly because I don't like the appearance that much (one of the first things I do when I set up an Windows machine is to set the UI/Start menu to the classic Win 95/98 style). However, after using it for awhile, I found I really liked it because I allowed me to get my work done faster. Looking for where particular settings were (like the forementioned cross references) is just a lot easier, which is ultimately the most important feature of any UI. As long is it saves me time, I don't really care how it looks.
As far as Vista goes, so far, I haven't encountered any big problems with it, although I should mention I turned off a lot of the features like Aero and Gadgets, so from my point of view, I'm basically just using XP. There are a few things that I don't like, as some basic tasks seem to be more difficult to do. In particular, I'm referring to the ability to have the signal from the line-in input played in the speakers, which is pretty easy to do in XP, but apparently requires changing obscure registry settings in Vista. And I say apparently because I still haven't gotten it to work yet. But in the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly small problem, so I'm not really too concerned yet.
I was shocked at how very similar it was to WinXP. I thought it was going to be this radical departure. Other than adding compositing/transparencies and the sidebar (which, looking at the task manager, eats ram for breakfast) it's almost identical to XP.
There are the driver issues, and the fact that you need a DX10 card to get the transparencies (MS is allergic to OpenGL I guess). I don't know, it just seems like a waste of time/money.
The most radical changes are under the hood, such as aggressive caching and improved indexing. Perhaps you hadn't noticed but this is the 21st century, and 40 megabytes no longer qualifies as "eats ram for breakfast". You do not need a DirectX 10 videocard to get Aero, anything with DX 9.0b or later will suffice. OpenGL is for chumps.
It's also worth mentioning that Vista does a lot of new stuff with memory. It'll use a lot more RAM than your XP machine does when you're not running games, but once you do boot up a game or some other application that requires the RAM, it can release a lot of that RAM from the stuff it's using it on. The Aero interface and Sidebar both can essentially disable themselves whenever you boot up an application that's going to use that video and system RAM.
It's still a little bit behind XP in usage (I think many estimates put it at around 3-5% slower), but hopefully they'll optimize it even more so that users running system straining software aren't forced to disable/close most of their background operations just to keep a game stable. It's the first step of a long jump towards way better system resource usage.
At any rate, you can't just open up the task manager and see 100MB of RAM used and say "oh man this is horribly inefficient" anymore. It doesn't work like that anymore.
Start menu - I've never been a fan of the start menu, it's just a hierarchal folder view with a bunch of submenus for subfolders. Not only is this a completely broken UI concept it is maddeningly unfriendly. Trying to show my grandmother how to launch Spider Solitaire was great fun. Click the Windows bauble, then click "Programs", then click "Games" (why did the menu change?), then click Spider Solitaire. I ended up making a shortcut on the desktop because the start menu is ridiculously complicated anymore.
OBJECTION!!
All you have to do is click Start, then type Spider Solitaire in the search box right above the start button!
If you think that requiring users to make use of a text based Search function in order to find the program they want to load is good UI design you need to stop posting on the Internet because you're fucking dumbing it up.
I'm not even kidding. Seriously. Just fucking stop while you're behind.
Pheezer on
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I work with one single software: Word 2007.
I love it VERY hard. It's the best word processor ever. I tried OO, and ran away disgusted with its 1995 interface. I like software with pretty AND useful interfaces. I have to look at them the whole day.
BTW, the new office interface is actually a lot SMALLER than the previous one, because it stays HIDDEN 99% of the tima, and is one click away the remaining 1%.
What kind of work do you do
Because it's a fucking nightmare for me. At least it's not as terrifying as Excel 2007 or Access 2007.
The only one that came out better or at least as usable was probably Project 2007.
Pheezer on
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I have to say I basically agree with the OP. Once XP got patched up, it was a pretty damn good operating system and I've had very few problems with it. Vista felt like a step backwards in that regard - unnecessary menus, broken application compatibility, and most aggravatingly my laptop went from working fine with the university network to me spending several days jumping through hoops to work out why it wouldn't connect.
EDIT: Oh yeah "Ribbon" in Office 2007 needs to go die in a fire and then be eaten by hungry wolves. Jesus fucking christ - I have never uninstalled a product so fast.
Start menu - I've never been a fan of the start menu, it's just a hierarchal folder view with a bunch of submenus for subfolders. Not only is this a completely broken UI concept it is maddeningly unfriendly. Trying to show my grandmother how to launch Spider Solitaire was great fun. Click the Windows bauble, then click "Programs", then click "Games" (why did the menu change?), then click Spider Solitaire. I ended up making a shortcut on the desktop because the start menu is ridiculously complicated anymore.
OBJECTION!!
All you have to do is click Start, then type Spider Solitaire in the search box right above the start button!
If you think that requiring users to make use of a text based Search function in order to find the program they want to load is good UI design you need to stop posting on the Internet because you're fucking dumbing it up.
I'm not even kidding. Seriously. Just fucking stop while you're behind.
You could argue that as a requirement for a GUI the concept is outdated but for a user interface it works just fine.
Start menu - I've never been a fan of the start menu, it's just a hierarchal folder view with a bunch of submenus for subfolders. Not only is this a completely broken UI concept it is maddeningly unfriendly. Trying to show my grandmother how to launch Spider Solitaire was great fun. Click the Windows bauble, then click "Programs", then click "Games" (why did the menu change?), then click Spider Solitaire. I ended up making a shortcut on the desktop because the start menu is ridiculously complicated anymore.
OBJECTION!!
All you have to do is click Start, then type Spider Solitaire in the search box right above the start button!
If you think that requiring users to make use of a text based Search function in order to find the program they want to load is good UI design you need to stop posting on the Internet because you're fucking dumbing it up.
I'm not even kidding. Seriously. Just fucking stop while you're behind.
You could argue that as a requirement for a GUI the concept is outdated but for a user interface it works just fine.
Is there a mod for Win XP that'll give you that? Coz being able to type a couple of letters seems faster then mousing through my programs menu.
I have to say I basically agree with the OP. Once XP got patched up, it was a pretty damn good operating system and I've had very few problems with it. Vista felt like a step backwards in that regard - unnecessary menus, broken application compatibility, and most aggravatingly my laptop went from working fine with the university network to me spending several days jumping through hoops to work out why it wouldn't connect.
EDIT: Oh yeah "Ribbon" in Office 2007 needs to go die in a fire and then be eaten by hungry wolves. Jesus fucking christ - I have never uninstalled a product so fast.
I have to say I basically agree with the OP. Once XP got patched up, it was a pretty damn good operating system and I've had very few problems with it. Vista felt like a step backwards in that regard - unnecessary menus, broken application compatibility, and most aggravatingly my laptop went from working fine with the university network to me spending several days jumping through hoops to work out why it wouldn't connect.
EDIT: Oh yeah "Ribbon" in Office 2007 needs to go die in a fire and then be eaten by hungry wolves. Jesus fucking christ - I have never uninstalled a product so fast.
You lose so hard...
OMG IT'S DIFFERENT! KILL KILL KILL.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Are you people like 110 years old and your ossified brains can't handle change? No wonder all sorts of interfaces still suck ass... people just groan about them forever if they're changed the tiniest bit, without even considering that it's better.
It honestly takes like 2 days to get used to, and after that it's a million times better. Unless you're some sort of prehistoric fossil that can't handle any kind of change.
Start menu - I've never been a fan of the start menu, it's just a hierarchal folder view with a bunch of submenus for subfolders. Not only is this a completely broken UI concept it is maddeningly unfriendly. Trying to show my grandmother how to launch Spider Solitaire was great fun. Click the Windows bauble, then click "Programs", then click "Games" (why did the menu change?), then click Spider Solitaire. I ended up making a shortcut on the desktop because the start menu is ridiculously complicated anymore.
OBJECTION!!
All you have to do is click Start, then type Spider Solitaire in the search box right above the start button!
If you think that requiring users to make use of a text based Search function in order to find the program they want to load is good UI design you need to stop posting on the Internet because you're fucking dumbing it up.
I'm not even kidding. Seriously. Just fucking stop while you're behind.
Where are you required to do such a thing? And where are your interface-design credentials anyway? Just fucking keep it to yourself the next time you have no fucking clue what you are talking about, but want to pretend you do.
I have to say I basically agree with the OP. Once XP got patched up, it was a pretty damn good operating system and I've had very few problems with it. Vista felt like a step backwards in that regard - unnecessary menus, broken application compatibility, and most aggravatingly my laptop went from working fine with the university network to me spending several days jumping through hoops to work out why it wouldn't connect.
EDIT: Oh yeah "Ribbon" in Office 2007 needs to go die in a fire and then be eaten by hungry wolves. Jesus fucking christ - I have never uninstalled a product so fast.
You lose so hard...
OMG IT'S DIFFERENT! KILL KILL KILL.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Are you people like 110 years old and your ossified brains can't handle change? No wonder all sorts of interfaces still suck ass... people just groan about them forever if they're changed the tiniest bit, without even considering that it's better.
It honestly takes like 2 days to get used to, and after that it's a million times better. Unless you're some sort of prehistoric fossil that can't handle any kind of change.
I guess you've never worked in tech support. Even changing an icon, not the placement, name or function, will throw a large percent of people off. Changing the background color on an app causes support calls. People who don't know how to use computers too well use a set process to get stuff done. They don't know why it works and they don't care. They just know if they follow certain steps that something will happen. If anything in that process changes at all they freak the hell out.
I can't fathom how someone could say with a straight face that the Explorer in XP is better than the Explorer in Vista. And I will admit that I didn't like the start menu changes at first; until I learned it was irrelevant and just used the search feature.
RandomEngy on
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited December 2007
My experience with Vista and with people who hate Vista is this without exception:
The people complaining about it know very little about why it works the way it does.
When I bought my new computer I figured I'd get Vista 64 bit to see how it goes. If I had a problem, I'd go back to XP. Man, Vista is awesome. I prefer it over XP for many reasons, not the least of which that everything works. XP never could find anything. Drivers, codecs, whatever. It never found any whereas whenever Vista says it's looking for something, it finds it almost every time.
Most people's complaints (In my experience - I didn't read this whole thread, so I don't what's been covered) seem to revolve around Vista using too much RAM and requiring you to confirm everything you do. The too much RAM thing is bullocks - anyone who says that is simply ignorant of Vista's pre-fetch behavior and it took me all of 2 minutes to locate the settings for install security. Vista only warns me about stuff that happens unexpectedly.
You know, they said it had poor driver support. That games had problems running on it. That it was buggy. I must be the exception then because I haven't run into a single problem. All my hardware works fine. All my games that ran on XP run on Vista (Even The Movies, which warned me that it probably wouldn't work) and Vista is just as stable as XP was for me, which is saying something because XP almost never crashed on me.
I've come the conclusion that the vast majority of bitching about Vista is plain old ignorance - and it boggles my mind that tech columns like Yahoo! bitch about stuff that they say is ubiquitous and yet I've never run into it. Go figure.
My cousin has a laptop with Vista on it and he constantly says that all errors whatsoever are caused by Vista. But then again, he does and says a lot of stupid things. Personally, I like Vista.
About Office 2007, I have to say that it is a lot better than 2003. In around half an hour of messing around with it, I've found features that apparantly was in 2003, but that I had never seen because they were previously hidden inside the menus in a way that doesn't make it immediatly apparant that they're there.
I've come the conclusion that the vast majority of bitching about Vista is plain old ignorance
Yes because you have a good experience with it means everyone else must too...
I first installed Vista the week it went RTM. The Nvidia drivers crashed... a lot. There still aren't drivers for the PCI NIC I had in my PC. The Creative drivers for the audigy 2 I have were so terrible that I took the card out and went back to using the onboard sound. I must be making this all up though because you had a good experience right?
Epyon9283 on
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
My experience with Vista and with people who hate Vista is this without exception:
The people complaining about it know very little about why it works the way it does.
When I bought my new computer I figured I'd get Vista 64 bit to see how it goes. If I had a problem, I'd go back to XP. Man, Vista is awesome. I prefer it over XP for many reasons, not the least of which that everything works. XP never could find anything. Drivers, codecs, whatever. It never found any whereas whenever Vista says it's looking for something, it finds it almost every time.
Most people's complaints (In my experience - I didn't read this whole thread, so I don't what's been covered) seem to revolve around Vista using too much RAM and requiring you to confirm everything you do. The too much RAM thing is bullocks - anyone who says that is simply ignorant of Vista's pre-fetch behavior and it took me all of 2 minutes to locate the settings for install security. Vista only warns me about stuff that happens unexpectedly.
You know, they said it had poor driver support. That games had problems running on it. That it was buggy. I must be the exception then because I haven't run into a single problem. All my hardware works fine. All my games that ran on XP run on Vista (Even The Movies, which warned me that it probably wouldn't work) and Vista is just as stable as XP was for me, which is saying something because XP almost never crashed on me.
I've come the conclusion that the vast majority of bitching about Vista is plain old ignorance - and it boggles my mind that tech columns like Yahoo! bitch about stuff that they say is ubiquitous and yet I've never run into it. Go figure.
I'm glad you don't work in testing. The "well it worked fine on my computer" anecdotal evidence defense doesn't mean it will work properly on everyone else's computers. Maybe the reason your mind gets boggled when people up criticism of Vista is that you don't know what you're talking about.
I guess you've never worked in tech support. Even changing an icon, not the placement, name or function, will throw a large percent of people off. Changing the background color on an app causes support calls. People who don't know how to use computers too well use a set process to get stuff done. They don't know why it works and they don't care. They just know if they follow certain steps that something will happen. If anything in that process changes at all they freak the hell out.
I plan to go into interface design and that's just plain depressing.
Sometimes though, when things get bad enough, you just have to go 'fuck it, they'll learn eventually' and change the interface. I guess it just means you have to take into consideration the amount of grief it will generate vs. the benefits, so the change better be damn worth it.
I mean, people say the Dvorak layout is supposedly better than the qwerty layout for keyboards, but since it's only a few percentage faster, people don't care enough to change all the keyboards in the world. In the case of Office 2007 though, the new interface is miles better than the Office 97 interface and its clones.
I've come the conclusion that the vast majority of bitching about Vista is plain old ignorance
Yes because you have a good experience with it means everyone else must too...
I first installed Vista the week it went RTM. The Nvidia drivers crashed... a lot. There still aren't drivers for the PCI NIC I had in my PC. The Creative drivers for the audigy 2 I have were so terrible that I took the card out and went back to using the onboard sound. I must be making this all up though because you had a good experience right?
The Vista OS, and the shitty third-party drivers that made it suck so bad at first, have come a LONG way since RTM. Seriously, it's been a year. You can't just say "Well I had SO MUCH TROUBLE installing my Sound Blaster on Vista a year ago, ergo it is a bad operating system."
Although, as a general rule, installing Vista on an older machine is more likely to result in problems than using it on a new machine. Many older systems, even if they meet "Premium Ready" specifications, just can't handle the degree to which Vista stresses the RAM and chipset.
I guess you've never worked in tech support. Even changing an icon, not the placement, name or function, will throw a large percent of people off. Changing the background color on an app causes support calls. People who don't know how to use computers too well use a set process to get stuff done. They don't know why it works and they don't care. They just know if they follow certain steps that something will happen. If anything in that process changes at all they freak the hell out.
I plan to go into interface design and that's just plain depressing.
Sometimes though, when things get bad enough, you just have to go 'fuck it, they'll learn eventually' and change the interface. I guess it just means you have to take into consideration the amount of grief it will generate vs. the benefits, so the change better be damn worth it.
I mean, people say the Dvorak layout is supposedly better than the qwerty layout for keyboards, but since it's only a few percentage faster, people don't care enough to change all the keyboards in the world. In the case of Office 2007 though, the new interface is miles better than the Office 97 interface and its clones.
Okay
Wow
Let's start with the Dvorak thing. It was easier to learn, yes. Once people are adjusted to a given layout, they work just as fast with it as any other. Nobody is switching back now that PC keyboards can handle people typing quickly where typewriters couldn't because everyone is comfortable with qwerty and no one in their right mind thinks two alternate key layouts in the same region would be a good thing.
Your insistence that 07's ribbon is inherently better because it's newer is mindboggling. UIs are judged based on the ease with which users across the spectrum can make use of the interface. One day, once you've taken a course in UI design, you'll understand that it's important to maintain certain coded elements so that people can easily grasp what's going on. Certain colours should only be used for certain types of messages. If every other program has a basic menu bar, then yours probably shouldn't be designed to be completely different. A certain level of basic conformity is a really, really good thing.
Here's the thing about Office 2007: the new UI isn't actually good. I can prove this by comparison to OS X. Go look at the difference between the OS 9 and OS X GUIs. In many ways they are radically different, yet at their core, they maintain a number of basic visual cues in common because that's what people expect and with a few basic elements that they can rely on, they're willing to learn how to use that nifty new bar at the bottom of the screen. That works. Change has to be gradual, even when it's a huge leap forward.
Office 2007 fails in that regard on many levels. For years the Office apps had the problem of constantly moving things from one menu to the other and back in the next version and that was a pain in the ass. Now none of those familiar touchpoints are present and it takes me at least five times as long to do something in 2007 that it took me to do in 2003. The worst part is that the ribbon is completely different from one app to the next, so learning anything in Word is pretty much useless in Excel (whereas before some basic things were going to be the same, the File, Edit and Help menus were nearly identical and we could all guess what would be under Tools after seeing it in one app). So now I've got to do some rote memorization of at least three different ribbons, and none of what I force myself to memorize will ever come in handy in any other program.
Do you see the problem with that statement? That is complete and total UI failure. A CONSISTENT and USABLE UI that allows me to use things I've learned previously and elsewhere to navigate it EFFICIENTLY is desirable. I don't care how fucking pretty you think it is, it's completely inconsistent with the rest of the applications on the PC and there's no way to figure out how to do anything aside from clicking through everything until I memorize the new locations of everything. And half of the time it makes no sense. So really, fuck Office 2007 and fuck the ribbon.
Pheezer on
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
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I hardly think multiplying wrong counts as a minor bug. In a spreadsheet app, especially. Considering spreadsheets have been around since the 70's.
But it's just a joke. The chances of someone actually hitting that bug is fairly small, but you have to admit it's pretty hilarious.
Although, in the case of this error, the calculations were performed correctly, it's just that it didn't display the right number.
Also, footnotes and citations are different.
Dont' tell me I'm generalizing Linux/Ubuntu. I've been using linux at least part time since Fedora Core 1. I've used Fedora, SUSE, I've also tried slackware, and Gentoo. I've been running ubuntu on my laptop for 2 years now, going back to 5.10. I think that I have a very broad view of what linux distrobutions can, and cannot do. And I am saying flat out, that I would not give an ubuntu install to my Grandmother. I do agree that Ubuntu, and all distros in general have made absolutely massive strides in usability, and that they get better all the time, but they are by no means ready for joe consumer to use yet.
The main reason I say that is there is no *official* support for a lot of peripherals. yes, I know that you can use your iPod, printer, scanner and camera and whatnot in a linux distro most of the time, but the drivers/software is written/developed/maintained by a community of people who do it because they want to. That, in my opinion, is not sustainable in the mass market. As sad as it sounds, until you can Run iTunes officially(again, not in Wine or anything) in Linux, or be able to install a program like quicken, or have offical support for all web plugins like activeX, Desktop linux will never, ever be ready for the mainstream. As shitty as a lot of bundled software is with things like cameras/scanners, guess what, 95% of people use them, and dont' want to give them up. That, is a fact, and one that will not change.
That is why Desktop linux will never hit mainstream.
Re: Office 2007. We've switched to it in our company, and after about 2 day of of grumbling most people ended up liking it, and I've had more than a few comments about how much easier it is to use. Honestly, I think office 07 is the best version of office since office 97, because MS was not afraid to throw out all the things that were staples in previous versions to make Office better. It's like the Jump from OS9 to OS X. There was a lot of resistance to it at first, but now, can you imagine going back to OS 9 on a regular basis? Office will be the same way.
Yes. A citation is a footnote which contains a reference to some other work. Like a book or something.
And that seems like cheating. Isn't the whole point of english class to learn what is and is not supposed to go in a paper like that?
But, yeh. I can see how that could be useful if you write a lot of academic papers.
After looking for a few seconds it looks like OO has a Bibliography Database. Seems to be essentially the same thing.
I think it is obvious you've never used MacOS 7 or Windows 3.x. In Windows 3.0 there was the Program Manager, it was a very nice launcher that only contained shortcuts to executable files and displayed those as a 16x16 icon. When a program was installed it would add an item to a group (Accessories or Games or something) and would be available from then on in Program Manager. Most installers didn't bother adding anything to the Program Manager besides an item for the executable itself. System 7 had the Launcher which just provided buttons for every item dragged into the window. Like the Program Manager it was pretty simple but effective. Instead of properly extending these concepts the start menu ended up being a bad clone of the System 7 Apple Menu. Stop harping about the fucking search box already. Search is a nice feature to have in Vista but it is not 100% reliable nor is it something my grandparents should have to rely on. The general application launcher ought to look like the "Games" folder rather than a list of nested folders with tiny icons.
I completely agree that Vista was designed for Microsoft rather than home users or even institutional buyers like schools and businesses. For every useful feature they added they seemed to have added another wizard to the OS. I do not think that a task based OS is friendly to anyone. Wizards are text adventures that change system settings, the only really ask you questions and don't suggest useful options to you. The OS should just have sane defaults and do as much for you as possible.
The firewall in Windows XP was extremely difficult to use for anyone not versed in the ways of Windows. In SP2 they made it a Control Panel item with a much improved interface, you could turn it on and off in the primary tab and added options were available in the other tabs. Right on the front tab it links to some documentation about the firewall. This is a great model for a lot of other services on Windows. The first interface should be as simple as possible and make a bunch of assumptions, turn something on or off and tell you why you might want to do that. Extra options can be accessed through other widgets in that control panel. This is a far better route than adding wizards all over the place to hide confusing or outright hidden dialog boxes.
This is one of the biggest areas I think Vista was screwed up. Wizards only hide existing dialogs and controls rather than replacing them with sane less confusing versions. The firewall in XP didn't really change between SP1 and SP2 but the controlling interface did and made it much more useful. I don't need to see all of the wireless networks signal strengths by default, I just want to see if my wireless network is available and connect to it. Some of these UI faux pas might be fixed in SP1 on Vista but probably not. There's a culture at Microsoft that allows bad UI decisions to be made and then flourish. The UIs that make it through various developer/marketing committees don't get vetted by some central UI czar and can usually make it into shipping products.
Another benefit of leadership from Office coming to the Windows division is that hopefully things will actually happen according to schedule. Office 2007 came out on time (I think?) and they even released Office 2007 SP1 early.
Hopefully Steven Sinofsky (the Office 2007 guy who is now in control of Windows) can bring at least some of the same discipline to Windows. Actually, there are rumours out there that all the features for Windows 7 have been 'locked down' already (as much as can be), so maybe they really are going to be more disciplined about it than in Windows Vista development.
All the windows firewall does is give me one more thing I have to turn off in a fresh XP install.
That's weird because I found out about it by opening OO and looking in the menu, and it is right there.
Considering it's free I'm surprised they can even keep up with MS.
That page must be out of date, it is in OO 2.3
And what is wrong with copying? You just said it was a good feature.
And I think the interface thing just comes down to personal preference.
You see, I was totally expecting, from the general vibe of the internet, to be horribly disgusted with it, but after actually poking at it, I am simply neutral. Essentially I see nothing that would warrant the effort of reinstalling, but if I had to reinstall, and i had a copy of it lying around, and I had 2Gb of ram... sure. Why not. It doesn't seem any worse than XP, maybe a bit slower, but nothing like how XP hit the brakes compared to 2000.
This I can mostly agree with, especially the hardware support. That said, there is nothing wrong with drivers and software being "written/developed/maintained" by the community. The problem is that the community isn't getting support from the manufacturers, particularly with regards to documentation/specifications for the hardware.
Some companies like Intel (surprisingly enough) are doing pretty good, especially with regards to their video and wireless drivers. Ralink provides open source drivers for their chipsets, and the community is almost to the point where their implementation of those drivers can be submitted for inclusion with the mainline kernel. It is the peripheral companies that are largely useless.
I don't agree with the need for ActiveX controls. Plugins exist with non-ActiveX versions for Mozilla/Firefox users, but they don't work under Linux for other reasons. ActiveX is just another name for [OLE] Automation, and is a Microsoft standard for IPC.
Honestly, other than Flash I'm not sure how many plugins are really needed for your browser. I know there are exceptional exceptions such as some country whose name I can't remember that had to develop a plugin for online bank transactions because of cryptography export restrictions, but still...the Totem/Mplayer plugins will play virtually every file format out there and basically usurps the functionality of QuickTime/WMP. Unless you play the free version of Bewjeweled or something I can't think of a reason for someone to install something other than Flash or maybe Java (applets are retarded, and online shit is more likely to use WebStart). Everything else is most likely malware.
With regards to bundled software...well, I think they are mostly shit and should die. I'm not talking about the people who already used to the crap and don't want to change (which a lot of people don't like), but for people who already have a computer than came with Ubuntu (since Dell sells them) it shouldn't be necessary. A good scanner/printer/camera interface that comes standard would be perfect.
None of my family members has found Canon's software (Zoombrowser) to be terribly usable. In fact, they just use the SD card slot on their PC and copy pictures off of it that way instead of using it. And there is Picasa for everything else.
That said, I'm letting this die here since it is offtopic.
I didn't think XP was slower than 2000, but I had a sufficient amount of RAM back then. If you had at least 512 MB it probably wouldn't be noticeable unless you had a bunch of software open or a memory hog like Photoshop. I had first used XP through a MSDN subscription, but I can't remember the version number. The boot logo still said "Whistler" on it, though.
The only machines I've [momentarily] used Vista on had 512 MB and 1 GB of memory in them. They both felt somewhat sluggish, but the 512 was outright irritating to use.
At least RAM is a lot cheaper these days.
I ran XP on 128mb for way too long.
But that's because the computer I was using at the time came with ME.
Dear god the horror.
ya, that's pretty much your problem right there. I would not run Vista on less than 2GB. 1GB would be the abolute minimum. just like with XP, when 512 woudl be the absolute minimum I would run it on, and 1GB is preferred for smooth operation.
Oh, I'm not saying it was on my PCs. These didn't belong to me. I could understand someone thinking that Vista ran like ass if it were installed it on OEM machines that were manufactured prior to the Vista Capable stickers came about, and even those "Vista Capable" machines frequently had half a gig of RAM in them.
It is like how I frequently consider "recommended specifications" on games to be the true minimum specs if you don't want it to run/look like shit. Vista Capable machines are only required to have 512 MB, but the Premium Ready (the recommended specs) are 1 GB.
ya, "capable" doesn't really mean it'll run well. Vista "capable" pretty much means that Vista will install and boot, it doesn't specify how good it will be.
When my RAM died about 2 months ago, I threw an old 512 Stick of ram I had into my system. And Vista was pretty much unusable. Even with 1GB, it was not fun to run Vista for the week while I waited for my RMA to come in.
I love it VERY hard. It's the best word processor ever. I tried OO, and ran away disgusted with its 1995 interface. I like software with pretty AND useful interfaces. I have to look at them the whole day.
BTW, the new office interface is actually a lot SMALLER than the previous one, because it stays HIDDEN 99% of the tima, and is one click away the remaining 1%.
As far as Vista goes, so far, I haven't encountered any big problems with it, although I should mention I turned off a lot of the features like Aero and Gadgets, so from my point of view, I'm basically just using XP. There are a few things that I don't like, as some basic tasks seem to be more difficult to do. In particular, I'm referring to the ability to have the signal from the line-in input played in the speakers, which is pretty easy to do in XP, but apparently requires changing obscure registry settings in Vista. And I say apparently because I still haven't gotten it to work yet. But in the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly small problem, so I'm not really too concerned yet.
It's also worth mentioning that Vista does a lot of new stuff with memory. It'll use a lot more RAM than your XP machine does when you're not running games, but once you do boot up a game or some other application that requires the RAM, it can release a lot of that RAM from the stuff it's using it on. The Aero interface and Sidebar both can essentially disable themselves whenever you boot up an application that's going to use that video and system RAM.
It's still a little bit behind XP in usage (I think many estimates put it at around 3-5% slower), but hopefully they'll optimize it even more so that users running system straining software aren't forced to disable/close most of their background operations just to keep a game stable. It's the first step of a long jump towards way better system resource usage.
At any rate, you can't just open up the task manager and see 100MB of RAM used and say "oh man this is horribly inefficient" anymore. It doesn't work like that anymore.
If you think that requiring users to make use of a text based Search function in order to find the program they want to load is good UI design you need to stop posting on the Internet because you're fucking dumbing it up.
I'm not even kidding. Seriously. Just fucking stop while you're behind.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
What kind of work do you do
Because it's a fucking nightmare for me. At least it's not as terrifying as Excel 2007 or Access 2007.
The only one that came out better or at least as usable was probably Project 2007.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
EDIT: Oh yeah "Ribbon" in Office 2007 needs to go die in a fire and then be eaten by hungry wolves. Jesus fucking christ - I have never uninstalled a product so fast.
You could argue that as a requirement for a GUI the concept is outdated but for a user interface it works just fine.
Is there a mod for Win XP that'll give you that? Coz being able to type a couple of letters seems faster then mousing through my programs menu.
You lose so hard...
OMG IT'S DIFFERENT! KILL KILL KILL.
It honestly takes like 2 days to get used to, and after that it's a million times better. Unless you're some sort of prehistoric fossil that can't handle any kind of change.
I guess you've never worked in tech support. Even changing an icon, not the placement, name or function, will throw a large percent of people off. Changing the background color on an app causes support calls. People who don't know how to use computers too well use a set process to get stuff done. They don't know why it works and they don't care. They just know if they follow certain steps that something will happen. If anything in that process changes at all they freak the hell out.
The people complaining about it know very little about why it works the way it does.
When I bought my new computer I figured I'd get Vista 64 bit to see how it goes. If I had a problem, I'd go back to XP. Man, Vista is awesome. I prefer it over XP for many reasons, not the least of which that everything works. XP never could find anything. Drivers, codecs, whatever. It never found any whereas whenever Vista says it's looking for something, it finds it almost every time.
Most people's complaints (In my experience - I didn't read this whole thread, so I don't what's been covered) seem to revolve around Vista using too much RAM and requiring you to confirm everything you do. The too much RAM thing is bullocks - anyone who says that is simply ignorant of Vista's pre-fetch behavior and it took me all of 2 minutes to locate the settings for install security. Vista only warns me about stuff that happens unexpectedly.
You know, they said it had poor driver support. That games had problems running on it. That it was buggy. I must be the exception then because I haven't run into a single problem. All my hardware works fine. All my games that ran on XP run on Vista (Even The Movies, which warned me that it probably wouldn't work) and Vista is just as stable as XP was for me, which is saying something because XP almost never crashed on me.
I've come the conclusion that the vast majority of bitching about Vista is plain old ignorance - and it boggles my mind that tech columns like Yahoo! bitch about stuff that they say is ubiquitous and yet I've never run into it. Go figure.
About Office 2007, I have to say that it is a lot better than 2003. In around half an hour of messing around with it, I've found features that apparantly was in 2003, but that I had never seen because they were previously hidden inside the menus in a way that doesn't make it immediatly apparant that they're there.
Yes because you have a good experience with it means everyone else must too...
I first installed Vista the week it went RTM. The Nvidia drivers crashed... a lot. There still aren't drivers for the PCI NIC I had in my PC. The Creative drivers for the audigy 2 I have were so terrible that I took the card out and went back to using the onboard sound. I must be making this all up though because you had a good experience right?
I'm glad you don't work in testing. The "well it worked fine on my computer" anecdotal evidence defense doesn't mean it will work properly on everyone else's computers. Maybe the reason your mind gets boggled when people up criticism of Vista is that you don't know what you're talking about.
Sometimes though, when things get bad enough, you just have to go 'fuck it, they'll learn eventually' and change the interface. I guess it just means you have to take into consideration the amount of grief it will generate vs. the benefits, so the change better be damn worth it.
I mean, people say the Dvorak layout is supposedly better than the qwerty layout for keyboards, but since it's only a few percentage faster, people don't care enough to change all the keyboards in the world. In the case of Office 2007 though, the new interface is miles better than the Office 97 interface and its clones.
Although, as a general rule, installing Vista on an older machine is more likely to result in problems than using it on a new machine. Many older systems, even if they meet "Premium Ready" specifications, just can't handle the degree to which Vista stresses the RAM and chipset.
Okay
Wow
Let's start with the Dvorak thing. It was easier to learn, yes. Once people are adjusted to a given layout, they work just as fast with it as any other. Nobody is switching back now that PC keyboards can handle people typing quickly where typewriters couldn't because everyone is comfortable with qwerty and no one in their right mind thinks two alternate key layouts in the same region would be a good thing.
Your insistence that 07's ribbon is inherently better because it's newer is mindboggling. UIs are judged based on the ease with which users across the spectrum can make use of the interface. One day, once you've taken a course in UI design, you'll understand that it's important to maintain certain coded elements so that people can easily grasp what's going on. Certain colours should only be used for certain types of messages. If every other program has a basic menu bar, then yours probably shouldn't be designed to be completely different. A certain level of basic conformity is a really, really good thing.
Here's the thing about Office 2007: the new UI isn't actually good. I can prove this by comparison to OS X. Go look at the difference between the OS 9 and OS X GUIs. In many ways they are radically different, yet at their core, they maintain a number of basic visual cues in common because that's what people expect and with a few basic elements that they can rely on, they're willing to learn how to use that nifty new bar at the bottom of the screen. That works. Change has to be gradual, even when it's a huge leap forward.
Office 2007 fails in that regard on many levels. For years the Office apps had the problem of constantly moving things from one menu to the other and back in the next version and that was a pain in the ass. Now none of those familiar touchpoints are present and it takes me at least five times as long to do something in 2007 that it took me to do in 2003. The worst part is that the ribbon is completely different from one app to the next, so learning anything in Word is pretty much useless in Excel (whereas before some basic things were going to be the same, the File, Edit and Help menus were nearly identical and we could all guess what would be under Tools after seeing it in one app). So now I've got to do some rote memorization of at least three different ribbons, and none of what I force myself to memorize will ever come in handy in any other program.
Do you see the problem with that statement? That is complete and total UI failure. A CONSISTENT and USABLE UI that allows me to use things I've learned previously and elsewhere to navigate it EFFICIENTLY is desirable. I don't care how fucking pretty you think it is, it's completely inconsistent with the rest of the applications on the PC and there's no way to figure out how to do anything aside from clicking through everything until I memorize the new locations of everything. And half of the time it makes no sense. So really, fuck Office 2007 and fuck the ribbon.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH