Microsoft Office XP

XPerience a new look

Take Office 2000, add a few new and interesting features, modify the look and feel of the program with blue highlighting for the menus and some refined icons, shake well and presto: you have Office XP.
Like it or not, the problem with every new version of an existing software remains the same: is it worth updating or is it not? It's a good question, particularly when one thinks of the considerable costs involved.
As mentioned, Office XP offers some pleasant innovations such as Smart Tags, Task Panes and Speech and Handwriting capabilities, some of which certainly allow to speed up several operations that are normally quite complex.
This Microsoft product represents a preview of the new Internet-centred direction taken by the Redmond-based firm: namely, .NET. In fact, the new suite allows the user to save a file on an Internet server by means of an MSN (Microsoft Network) service so that the document may be accessed at any time. This is certainly an interesting, although not unique, solution; yet considering the present day limits in terms of Internet security the value of this feature is still questionable.
Office XP has been improved with an eye for working environments. Among the innovations. users will find a feature that allows business users in distributed office environments to work on shared documents. Word 2002 allows multiple users to edit a document at the same time by making copies of the document for each user and merging it back together.
On the right-hand side of the screen the new design offers a vertical pane with easy access to some more advanced available options. The question of how advantageous these features really are is disputable and in most cases depends on how often the user employs the options themselves.
Smart Tags is one of the most discussed innovations. They are a set of buttons shared across the Office applications. Smart Tags give you easy access to a set of actions every time the program determines that the pre-set conditions established by the user are in effect. For example, Word may determine that a person's name has been inserted in a text and therefore Smart Tags will give the user access to a set of actions such as sending an e-mail, scheduling an appointment in the calendar or adding a contact to the address book. Either way, Smart Tags actions may be added by accessing the option panel. If you have grown tired of hitting the keys on your keyboard every time you have to type a document, you may dictate a text to Office XP and reformat it and even access the many menus using speech and voice commands. However, employment of the Speech Recognition capabilities requires a more powerful processor (at least 400Mhz) than the minimum required specifications.
One of the new features that Microsoft users may not be accustomed to is the software activation. Once the suite has been installed and once the serial number has been inserted, it will be necessary to request the product's activation code either through the Internet or by telephone. You must activate Office within the first 50 times you run it otherwise you will be able only to open a document, but not modify it or save it.
Generally speaking, Office XP is a more complex product thanks to its Handwriting capabilities, its ability to create actual pamphlets or the simple possibility to save documents for the Web.
The suite is available in three versions: Standard, Professional and Developer. Prices for the new program or for updates vary in accordance with the selected version and start at $379.00 CDN for updates of the standard version.
Is the upgrade worthwhile, then? Perhaps business users should look into the new suite, considering that Microsoft offers them such a possibility. Home users, perhaps, would be better off staying with their current gear.
For more information visit www.microsoft.ca

Publication Date: 2001-09-16
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=390