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Adept Joined: 12 Nov 2000 Posts: 268 Location: Canada

This is for zugg cuz I noticed it in his rant part 2

How do you like Office xp? I didnt like it first time I tried, should I stick with office 2k? any comments? suggestions all

Novice Joined: 20 Nov 2001 Posts: 35 Location: USA

Well, I'm not Zugg, but I too have Office XP. It's streamlined a little bit better, opens things faster and the like, but overall, it's the same layout etc of 2K. Biggest problem with installing it now would be that not too many would be able to view your databases and such if you convert them to XP format (Due to the lack of XP users currently).

Otherwise, the install is much smaller, because they took out the annoying paper clip (Office Assistant). Losing all his files makes the install a breeze, and much smaller.

If you can live without the assistant, and want to have the neatest, brightest, shiniest, best(?) Office around, then check out XP. I like it.

-Crymson

Adept Joined: 12 Nov 2000 Posts: 268 Location: Canada

does anyone else agree with this post?

Wanderer Joined: 22 Oct 2000 Posts: 90 Location: Sweden

As long as you get rid of that SODDING PAPER CLIP it's fine. BUT... make SURE you customize your install and REMOVE the assistant, or else it will come popping back up!!

"May the Force be with you"
[url]peewee@mars11.net[/url]

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

You have to be careful about the things they don't advertise

.

For instance, my sole gripe with Office XP is that Outlook no longer has Net Folders capabilities. In a small office without an Exchange server, Net Folders allowed my co-workers and I to share contacts and calendar events. Outlook XP claims Net Folders has "security issues" and this functionality won't work without MS Exchange now.

But don't look for that little tidbit in the product literature.

zMUD 6 Online Help: All the power you'll ever need.

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2001 7:58 pm

I only did the update to Office XP because I wanted the latest Outlook in case Chiara's stability problems in Outlook 2000 had been fixed. I don't use stuff like Net Folders, so that hasn't been an issue, but it's annoying for them to take out features.

The install was painless. Quite a surprise from the XP OS install. The only thing I didn't really like is that I had moved Chiara's Outlook mail files to a backup drive to free up space on the C: drive. When I ran Outlook XP the first time, it apparently scanned the disks for these files and automatically found them. On one hand, this is good since email was up and running painlessly. On the bad side, now it's using the mail files on the backup drive as *live* files and I haven't a clue how to move them without getting into trouble.

The other nice thing was that my Outlook Plugin still works fine without recompiling or anything, so they left the DLL Plugin interface alone. Since Visual Studio blew away my source code for this plugin a while back, I was really glad to see I didn't have to create it from scratch

Word and Excel seem normal. I'm *very* glad the assistant is gone. I always do a custom install so that I can decide what I want and don't want. That way I can get rid of the bloated demos and sample files, blow away the assistant, but add back features I use like the Excel solver and stuff like that.

Oh, one other note: Office XP uses the *same* licensing scheme as Windows XP! Yes, that means you can only install Office XP on *one* system. No more sharing CDs and putting Office on all your home computers.

This licensing is such a shame. I remember when Office had a very liberal license allowing you to legally install copies of Office from work on your home computers. If I remember correctly, the license was compared to a book: only running in one place at one time. What a change the new license is compared to the old system. And I'm sorry, but I'm *not* paying $250-$300 *PER* computer for an Office XP upgrade. That's just insane.

So, use Office XP if you must...it doesn't seem to be broken. But unless you *really* need the upgrade for some reason, I'd avoid it just to prevent Microsoft from making any more money on this. They need to get the *strong* message from sales that their new licensing and pricing is a failure.