Microsoft Office 2007 tangent?

MS Office 2007 is a bad move. As an engineer would say, a tangent into the unknown.

Over the years I have watched (and admired) how Microsoft Office grew and integrated their diverse products. They have been competing (who with?) for vertical splits in the market by languages. Conquering country by country, waayyy! They got Japan finally, whoopee here's Finland, now Hindi...... Yet nobody really understands how to get the most from the products because we don't understand the programmers' philosophy. The MS business says you can do what you want, here are the books. Lots of them, read 'em, go on....The world is your oyster. How many times have you seen the ads showing people hitting the keyboard and colour-printed works of arts are spewing out, looking so easy and effortless. Ever happen to you? Didn't think so! It is sweaty, pressurised, stressful and endless recycling of work in search of fabled excellence.

There is a simple remedy for Microsoft. I think I know exactly how MS Word and Excel should be reconfigured for structural engineers. A dentist might feel differently. Whatever MS Office marketing gurus believe, an engineer is not going to want to read about payroll or market segmentation setups like Northwind. But it is a fact. Neither is an accountant going to use MathCAD with engineering examples and references to figure out their needs. If MS Office want to expand their share, they need to understand their market needs now and split it horizontally. We need profiling. MS programmers need to understand how I might use the product and they can tailor my defaults to suit. It is sad that engineers (and many people too) do not understand that the defaults can and should be tweaked like a cook adding spices to the recipes. But it is a fact. I spend most of my time pointing this out to engineers and it is alwways a revelation to many.


For some insane reason, Microsoft Office 2007 had to happen; it was probably boredom, or the sense of do 'something, anything but don't stand still' idiocy. Exactly what advantage did it bring to my work? I haven't figured that out yet. I know the next few years are going to lead to another generation of mediocre defaulting calculations because some guy decides that using the templates in 2007 are signs of being smart....... and all calcs should be in colour even though we don't use colour printers....all good but useless intentons.

Apparently, there are ways to design the ribbons, so I will look into that.

In the meantime I hope they are planning on keeping VBA macros......I heard rumours it might get bumped. I can finally get engineers excited and enthusiastic about VBA Macros and back into the game as programmers and masters of their destiny. But MS Office thinks it should disappear...killjoys... Just as we reached the fabled promised land at long last, they'll switch it off. Sick. What's the alternative? If VBA gets switched off, I might as well buy a MAC.

I've seen many friends, lifelong IBM PC users now swear by their MACs. I am tempted. Should I buy a MAC? Or give Bill one more chance?