What will Vista do for me?

[silvermane]

Office 2007 is leaps and bounds better than previous versions.

Examples? I found it kludgy and counterintuitive. Menus that take half of the screen? No, thanks.

 

[Mercule]

Which one will let me use 3 monitors at the same time? Thats the one I need.

Dunno. I put out for a wide-screen this time around.

 

[XCorvis]

Which one will let me use 3 monitors at the same time? Thats the one I need.

Vista has improved support for multiple monitors.

 

[IronWolf]

Which one will let me use 3 monitors at the same time? Thats the one I need.

Info from MS:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/multimonVista.mspx

 

[ThirdWizard]

Examples? I found it kludgy and counterintuitive. Menus that take half of the screen? No, thanks.

Tabs make everything easier. I can find what I need to do without going through menu leading to menu. I found Excel much easier to work with using tabs than previously.

It previews your choices so you don't have to click on them and then Ctrl+Z to change it back. Want to change the font in Word? Put the mouse over the new font and you'll see what your document will look like. Take the mouse off and its back to normal. Simple. Works with pictures, tables, or anything else.

The extension .docx is really a zip file. If I want to work with a picture loaded into my word document, its actually a picture found inside the docx zip directory structure and I can manipulate it freely. Same goes for anything embedded in your document.

You can create your own tabs! Say your company has various formats for requisitions or any other standardized document they use. They can create a "requisitions" tab in Word that has textboxes that can be filled in and will auto-populate a document correctly and quickly. This is done through .NET and an easy install that will work out of the box (or can be pushed onto company computers).

That's some good stuff.

Edit to add: I'm not sure what you mean by menus taking half the screen. Here's a screenshot of Word, taken with Vista's Snipping Tool.

 

[XCorvis]

You can also hide the "ribbon," as they call it.

 

[ThirdWizard]

You can also hide the "ribbon," as they call it.

Ah, good point. Here it is hidden. When you minimize it, you can still click on the tabs and they'll extend downward to be usable, then when you click off of them, they go back to a minimized state. I keep them open, though.

Edit to add that I'm a huge proponent of tabs. They called me crazy for putting tabs in my programs and for pushing for their use whenever possible. But, I was vindicated with Firefox's tabs and now with Microsoft! Who's laughing now?? WHO'S LAUGHING NOW????

 

[thalmin]

Has anyone used EToools with Vista?

 

[Felon]

Ah, good point. Here it is hidden. When you minimize it, you can still click on the tabs and they'll extend downward to be usable, then when you click off of them, they go back to a minimized state.

It boggles my mind that 2007's cluttered, chaotically-laid-out ribbons are considered easier to work with than menus. I really thought you guys were being sarcastic.

As far as I've seen, there's no way to customize the ribbons, and many items simply aren't available. I had a guy in a nearby cubicle cursing because he couldn't find an icon for printing. Of course, the big problem is that MS decided to get rid of "Help".

 

[XCorvis]

It boggles my mind that 2007's cluttered, chaotically-laid-out ribbons are considered easier to work with than menus. I really thought you guys were being sarcastic.

As far as I've seen, there's no way to customize the ribbons, and many items simply aren't available. I had a guy in a nearby cubicle cursing because he couldn't find an icon for printing. Of course, the big problem is that MS decided to get rid of "Help".

Believe it or not, for most people it IS easier - once they LEARN it. It's like Dvorak keyboards. It makes no sense if you're used to something else, but once you learn the layout it's actually easy.

Also, help is still there and it's an order of magnitude better than it ever was.