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"Sort of a love / hate thing..."
on by Joe MPros Very flexible and nearly every convenience tool imaginable.
Cons Unsecured macros, restrictive licensing and "activation", no real improvement over 2K or XP versions, high price.
Summary I've been using Office for years, since the 16-bit 4.0 days. I actually have 2003 Pro, but have never installed more than the "Standard" set of applications. (Don't ask.)
Word is a terrific word processor, Excel is capable of far more than I'll ever learn how to use, and PowerPoint makes pretty quick work of slide shows (if you really want to subject your coworkers to that sort of thing.) Outlook has been underrated and overlooked for contact managment and calendaring, IMHO.
Even so, 2003 was no real improvement over versions 2000 or XP. The Big Brother activation scheme means getting the third degree should you want to remove it from one machine and install it on another. (Would "DEactivation be all that hard to include?)
All in all, Office 2003 is very good, but hardly changed little since the 97 version, and therefore somewhat overpriced. As much of an Office fan as I've been over the years, now I tell people to check out OpenOffice first. It does nearly as much and costs nothing but some download time. -
"Less than the sum of its parts."
on by qprizePros Ubiquitous
Cons Cost, lousy interface, lousy formatting tools, lousy comments, lousy footnotes, lousy spreadsheet tools, lousy presentations tools, lousy integration, lousy...
Summary If you want a package for your 5th grader, MS Office - any version - will do fine. If you want to make professional documents, spreadhseets, or presentations, almost anything is better. And even Microsoft appears to acknowledge that Access is hopeless.
You'll waste time trying to format documents, from simple hanging indents to outlining to footnotes you can't get it to do what you need, only what it wants to do. And forget about comments, revisions, or God forbid hidden codes [that show where you have 17 consecutive nested font settings]. If you want graphics, large documents, or sophisticated formatting, you want something else.
Excel tools are hardly better. It limits the size of files, it limits the number of variables to sort, it makes you install all sorts of extra files just to access formulas! And creating attractive, easy to read graphs is simply onerous.
Powerpoint is a joke. Even it's bullet charts are unsophisticated. You can't edit any meaningful grahics, it's charts are even worse than Excel's, and you'll be deafened by the groans when you use one of the canned designs for a meeting. If you ever want to ruin your career, build a large, critical presentation in a single file. By the time you recover what's left after it crashes you'll be asking, "You want fries with that?"
Microsoft Office does nothing as well or better than anyone else, except marketing. -
"Bad Interface and hidden tools"
onPros Calculation, critical path and earned value analysis are the best things in here
Cons A very Bad Interface after adding the project guide on the left where there is no place in here, there is no access permissions on the project file, there is a lot of hidden toolbars like euro converter and file versions without any kind of help about the
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"new outlook ui is worth upgrade alone"
on by intrinsic99Pros better outlook ui, very stable
Cons high cost.
Summary The redesigned outlook interface is alone worth upgrading. overall its a much better product over office xp which was very buggy.
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"I have loved the full beta version"
onPros The beta version has worked flawlessly for the last 6 months. For Word users and Outlook users at least the standard uprade is worth the money.
Cons None.
Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003 user reviews
Quick Specifications
- Category Office applications
- Platform PC
