Although the recent release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system has received a lot of attention recently, the big software company also recently released the newest version of its productivity software: Office 2007. Office 2007 has been available since November 2007 for business customers. . . Microsoft’s proprietary office software suite features renowned programs such as Word, Outlook, Excel, Front Page, and Power Point, to name a few, and is used by approximately half a billion people around the world. (Just for perspective’s sake, the population of the United States is estimated to be about three hundred million.)
Traditionally, upgrading to newer versions of Microsoft Office hasn’t been a big problem for individuals and businesses because the changes from one version to the next have been very subtle. Basically, new software would be installed on a company’s machines, and employees would gradually learn to use the new features built into the new software.
This is simply not the case when contemplating an upgrade to Office 2007 for a number of reasons. This is because the interface that Office 2007 uses represents a radical redesign of the previous interface. The main idea behind the design of Office 2007 is that it should be more efficient to use than previous versions of Microsoft productivity software, and in this case, efficiency is determined by decreasing the number of mouse clicks required to complete a task. determined. The result of this shift in thinking has been the removal of the dropdown menus we’ve grown accustomed to in favor of what Microsoft calls “The Ribbon.” The ribbon is essentially a toolbar at the top of the program window that provides all the functionality that used to exist in dropdown menus on different tabs. This will supposedly decrease mouse usage by up to 60 percent compared to previous versions of Office, and as a result, allow users to spend more time producing instead of tweaking.
The problem with this new interface is that many companies anticipate higher costs associated with upgrading to Office 2007 in the form of training and lost productivity as workers get used to the new software than with previous versions. According to Microsoft, many users of the new software will adapt with between two hours and two days of practice. However, paradoxically, more experienced users may need up to two weeks to get used to Office 2007 because they have much more to “unlearn” before learning the new interface. Another research firm has come up with a very different timeline. He says many companies can expect to give employees three hours of formal training and then expect to see up to four weeks of decreased productivity as employees get used to the software on their own.
Of course, with this kind of anticipated difficulty in porting to Office 2007, one has to wonder if the new interface will really improve productivity in the long run to make it worth upgrading. Due to questions like that, many companies are in no rush to upgrade and are looking at time frames of years instead of months for their upgrades. Considering that future versions of Office, along with all the other software packages it influences, such as OpenOffice.org and WordPerfect, will likely have similar interfaces, the answer is that it’s probably worth transitioning to this new interface. .
