Say it with me, folks: Windows Vista *does not* equal Office 2007. Repeat it again (and again). Everyone got it? Please pass along the news. This is important.
Why the rant on this, you ask? Because the “uninformed” have officially driven me nuts with this. Yet another co-worker of mine was stating that “he really thought Vista was fine, except that the new Word was hard to get his arms around.”. It was clear during the conversation that to him Windows Vista and Office 2007 were one-and-the-same. They are not, folks. They are not. You can use Vista with Office 2003, if you like, and you can use Office 2007 with Windows XP. They are not mutually inclusive. I promise you.
The bigger issue here, perhaps, is that Microsoft unveiled two major upgrades at the same time, and that might not have been the wisest idea. When your OS (Windows) and your Productivity Suite (Office) both have 90%+ of the market share, even small changes are noticed by a whole lotta people. Big changes, such as in the case of the Vista and Office 2007 releases, are felt that much more. In my opinion, the pill may have gone down easier if the releases had been staggered a bit better. As it is, many folks upgraded to Vista and Office 2007 at the same time. The UI changes rocked their world a bit too much, and confusion set in.
Just my $.02 here, and I personally really enjoy both products. That said, the average consumer can only handle so much change at one time.
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