Office 2000 vs Office 2007

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ToyotaNSaturn

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After reading this article this article: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away it got me thinking about my own recent experience with two versions of MS Office, Office 2000 & Office 2007.

Installed Office 2000 on my core2duo 2.4ghz Inspiron 1720 with Vista, 4GB of RAM and a 120GB 5400RPM SATA disk. Earlier this year, I refreshed a friend's Dell 1100 Celeron 2.2, 1GB RAM, 80GB 7200RPM disk with XP and Office 2000.

Office 2000 performance: Similar on both laptops! All 3 main apps-Word, Excel, Powerpoint- literally fly up onto the screen as if they are eager to be used. Much like a good dog waiting to be of service to the master.

Office 2007. Slow. Apps take longer to load, the interface is more confusing yet it looks nicer.

(The slower to invoke Open Office is my personal home favorite, but it doesn't come into play here as we're talking Microsoft software.)

The kicker is that I can't find a single reason to use Office 2007 over Office 2000 other than extremely large Excel data sets that demand more than 255 columns. That's it.

Software is just getting more bloated nowadays. I've come to the conclusion that new software does not mean better. It's a downloader beware and buyer be da**ed atmosphere with companies selling bloated pigs disguised as software.

My new Inspiron 1720 takes about 1 minute to boot up With Vista. That's with only one thing in the Startup group and only a few things in the Startup key in the registry. This is just awful. A Dell Optiplex P133 with Windows 95 booted in under 15 seconds. That was with a paltry-slow 2GB disk and 32MB RAM. Office '97 ran very fast on it. This dinosaur by today's technology has been the benchmark for Windows speed and efficiency to this day.

It's refreshing to see how fast BITOG has become with the new upgrade. Not too often one says "Faster" and "upgrade" in the same sentence. Of course, it's not running Office 2007...
 
I bought Office 2007 for my wife's new laptop last May and the license allows it to be on up to 3 computers but I don't see the benefit of having it on mine. Office 2000 seems to be just fine and 2007 doesn't seem to improve much of anything. If it slows down my machine then why bother?
 
I have a new Inspiron 1520 w/ Vista and I can't believe how dog slow it is compared to my 6 year old Dual Xeon 2.4ghz dell desktop with XP. It was like going back a few years into the past with PII chips and Windows 98.

Now my main machine is dead (6 year old Dual Xeon) and the only option for OS I have is Vista Vista Vista. Guess I can use that as an excuse to get a Quad Core with at least 4GB of ram. Betcha it will still be slow!
 
Originally Posted By: OriginHacker21
I...... and the only option for OS I have is Vista Vista Vista..!


I have been getting several copies of XP from EBAY for reasonable cost ( not the education copies, either). I am not a fan of Vista, and do not put it on new 'puters.
 
Considering the raw computing power moderns PC have, our desktops should FLY! But they don't ... they drag along.

I have Ubuntu 7.10 running on a PIII/933Mhz with 512 megs mem. It's not snappy, but adequate. And BTW, I'd hardly call Gnome snappy either vs Win. I have it dual-booted with Win98 and it runs - OK "runs" (as in absence of BSOD and other infamy) - like a scalded cat. Yes I know, apples and oranges comparison since the software is 9yrs apart ... but my point is that not all Linux distributions are faster than Win.
 
OriginHacker, OEM CD's generally don't need keys as they have custom installation routines that includes the key info during the setup so it never nags you for it. I've found that Toshiba laptops bucks this trend and will ask for the key.

The CD's contents of a Dell or HP (or other vendors) is a bit different than the standard XP contents.
 
When running the Gnome Desktop shut off some of the eye candy + unneeded services like Bluetooth, handicapped options, etc. which will speed things up.

Another option from the Terminal type: gconftool-2 --type boo1 --set /apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources true then hit enter.

If you want to change this option back change the true to false.

For an older computer too you can use Xfce, Fluxbox or Enlightenment rather than Gnome or KDE which take a lot of resources.

lst install the package called menu. Then open the Terminal and type the following command. sudo update-menus.

This will update things so they will work in your new window manager.

If you do some reading on the net about these different windows managers you will find that you can install them and on boot-up have your choice. You then can set one as the default window manager and change it at anytime if you desire.

The first step before installing a new window manager is to run the following command from the Terminal.

I have found that the above command works well for me but you may want to try the other window managers I mentioned.

There are many others out there too.

I find that of all the distributions of Linux for the home desktop that I have tried, the Mint Linux in the Gnome version is not easy as far as installation goes but works well too. For older computers there is a xfce version.
 
All very interesting. I just bought a sony VAIO woith 2.2GHz core duo centrino, 2GB ram, runbning vista and office 2007.

The only discernable difference between that and my 1.7GHz, 1GB RAM IBM laptop running XP is that Vista indexing seems to be slow or run too much, as the HD in the vista equipped computer (it is a hybrid HD, by the way, 160 GB with 256 MB NVRAM flash memory), the HD seems to spin more, more often. This may go away though, after a few more hours of using it.

IMO, office 2007 menus and front-end seem to be a bit more convenient than office 2003, which is opn my old laptop. office 2k7 seems to open up just fine, quickly anbd without issue.

I even still run the windows sidebar.

The problem with vista is (1) too many trial and startup programs on an OE install (common with any MS OS over the last 10 years) (2) too intensive an interface (though Ive still kept most all of it without terrible penalty), and (3) too many security checks and warnings in the background.

(1) is a non issue on the vista box I built last winter, (2) can be disabled and (3) is something that Ive gotten used to, and though it is annoying, it keeps me more intimately knowledgable of what is going on.

It is a shame that software is not becoming more elegant, and rather more bloated. For me, most of what I need to do could be done in windows 98, 2k and certainly XP. Why not have XP functionality in a 98 footprint? Perhaps not doable, but at least something to shoot for. That aside, with the right HW setup (bargain basement never really meets the needs of any situation), and the right implementation, it works as described and is transparent in performance from one version to the next, while theoretically being ablke to do more.

it does stink that one cannot in a straightforward manner put the OS they want onto the HW they want, when planned obsolescence is in play.

JMH
 
I had to buy Office 2007 because Open Office wouldn't open my Office 2003 documents (especially the ones with tables, etc...).

Been using Office 2007 for a few days now and I really like it - much better than 2003. I find that the menu ribbon options are easier to use - quicker to get to - and fun. I really like the new font that it comes with. Microsoft OneNote is really fun too.
 
BTW, I'm still using MS Office 2000 at work on Win 2000. Not sure what the newer machines are getting, but it's more than adequate.
 
My wife is well versed in the Office suite of products; and after using Office 2007 for a while she loves it. I'm still getting used to it all.

I just wish it was a little faster. Outlook especially.
 
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