WOW - I have to say WOW. I read PC Magazines review of Office 12 beta and
have to wonder if the person was held prisoner until they wrote a nice
review or if they were being blackmailed.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1888060,00.asp PC MAG claims Office 12
is the biggest change to Office in 10 years! I would be embarrassed to
write such a boot-licking review if I were that writer. I thought a
reports job was to be objective. Instead of just going on about how
wonderful it is, why not point out some of the major flaws in it as well.
Since PC Mag went on about the good stuff - I'll let you know a few of my
major concerns about the version 12 release so you have some balance.
Please do read their review as they do highlight the good things you might
be waiting for in the next version of Office.
OK - they changed to toolbar - it is now even MORE mac like than before -
OOOH - AHHH. If I was that hung up on a MAC interface I'd just by a MAC -
please get over it MS - it isn't everything - there is more to improving
your products (office and windows) than just making them look like MACs!! I
don't consider a mac toolbar a big change. I had little problem navigating
it so it isn't a bad toolbar layout so I'm not complaining that it is bad -
just not what people who actually have more than a kindergarten education
need MS to focus on. We need Office to be more FUNCTIONAL - prettier
doesn't justify an upgrade in a corporate environment. You want our money
MS - than make it worth it for us to upgrade! Does it really need to be
THAT much more intuitive that you spend so much time on that menu bar?
Anyone who has used a product for a day pretty much knows 80% of all the
functions they will use and after a week you probably are at 90%. So why
not focuts on giving those of us who have actually used a computer for more
than a week the functions we have been needing for YEARS!
MS doesn't seem to really want to hear what is wrong with their product as
the click here to provide feedback button is not functioning!
Before anyone gets all concerned that I'm bashing a Beta vs. a final
release - relax, I'm not going on about how it is slow or hung many times or
things like that because I'm expecting issues like that in a beta. It is
CORE features that are missing that I'm concerned about. If I thought MS
had even thought about these missing key features I wouldn't be writing
this. But as the article says it is the biggest change in 10 years - so
let's give those developers some things to think about.
Here is what my issue is.
They haven't improved the two biggest gimped applications in Office -
Outlook and Access.
1 Access - still can't use JPGs effectively - they are a package - in Office
12 you had Photo Editor so JPGs showed up in reports/forms. So what does MS
think we are LESS likely to have databases with pictures 5 years later? If
you want to bring databases to the average user think about what they would
have in it. Even contacts in Outlook has pictures! Contacts are a
database. Your default database is for an inventory - don't you think most
companies would start to consider pictures essential in a database? When
you shop on line - do you ever buy anything without a PICTURE? Isn't it
sad that previoius versions of Office - pre2003 had no issue with pictures
but the newer ones can't handle them
2 Databases with JPGs still absurdly large. The jpgs by themselves are only
about 2MB but with all the white space in Access, they take up 600MB!!!!
3 I saw no way to convert my database - save as, export etc so I could save
it to a 2006 format. Not sure if I could if that would help with JPGs.
Frankly I couldn't figure out how to create a table with pictures from
scratch in the new version! I didn't see a way of creating any field type -
e.g. currency, date, etc. I could select templates - e.g. begin, current
value etc - but not just add any type as before.
Outlook. I'd love to tell you about Outlook but it always came up out of
resources!! I have 1 GIG of RAM - 100 GIG FREE on my hard drive and a P4
2.8 and a 256MB video card. I'm hoping MS doesn't think that isn't
sufficient for opening mail! I ended up creating a new profile and I was
able to get into e-mail.
1 MS keeps on talking about improving SEARCHING technology. Guess what
people do A LOT of in Outlook - SERCHING. So when I search more than one
folder, I want to see both the TO and the FROM folder - because if I am
searching MY mailbox it is always FROM me, and if I'm searching my sent
folder as well as my inbox, I need to know who it went TO.
2 When is outlook actually going to EXIT completely when you close it or
click on exit. It is the most tenacious program I've ever seen. If you
need to flip between outlook profiles it is essential to have Outlook
actually stop all processes. Which leads to my third point.
3 Let us open more than one outlook profile at the same time. Let's face it
how many people have at least 3 e-mail accounts - their personal, business
and their register/buy products account where they don't care about getting
on a spam list. I have 2 business accounts that I keep in one profile and
three personal accounts I keep in a separate profile. Switching between the
two is unpleasant but I would never want the two profiles combined.
4 I don't see an import function for Goldmine. I realize that isn't a
function too many people will want but it would be nice.
Business Contact Manager.
BCM is such a simple thing for them to improve upon. If they just synched
the basic contact data with a normal exchange account contacts so you could
access the data via OWA and sync it with your pocketpc/WM5 device the
product would offer something head and shoulders above Saleslogix, Act,
Goldmine etc. It probably would take a programmer about 1 day to develop it
and test it. Supposedly BCM is for Small Businesses and yet so is Small
Business Server if I'm not mistaken. So why not give the SBS people the
contact management feature they need?
