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To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

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nosh:
I recently upgraded my mother's PC to Office 2007. She's not exactly a savvy user but was somewhat familiar with the older MSO interface and was completely lost. I had to keep listening to her complain till I relented and rolled it back to Office 2003.

Funny thing is, after I did I actually found myself envying her! I'm not a regular Office user and I've found myself fumbling on several occasions trying to perform what would have been complete no-brainer tasks on older Office versions. I miss the old menu-toolbar interface that I spent years getting familiar with and I completely HATE the ribbon. It's like MS swept the carpet from under my feet.

The only reason I haven't gone back to Office 2003 is coz I'm assuming the ribbon is here to stay and since I have made the leap I may as well stick with it so I can get used to it. Is there any news regarding future versions of Office? Do people actually like this monstrosity? At the very least they could have given us a swappable interface so people who were not comfortable with the ribbon weren't forced to use it. This seems more like a carefully calculated decision made by the finance department at MS rather than the technical one. What do those of you who've tried the ribbon interface feel?

lanux128:
there have been some discussions about that here in DC.. i'm like you, going to make peace with the ribbon, when i start using Office 2007 (eventually).. ;)

here are threads:
• Ribbon vs. Toolbar, round 2
• Will you upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007?
• Microsoft Office 2007 public Beta out now!

Ampa:
I am a very light user of Office - occasional dips into Word (mostly for letters) and Excel for the most basic of tables, and spreadsheets - and I actually like the ribbon!

Most things do seem to be readily accessible with only a click or two, and I like that fact that I can see it, rather than knowing that there probably is an option to do task X, if only I knew which menu it was buried in.

Ampa

lanux128:
over the weekend, i have been trying out Office2007 at a friend's laptop and the new fonts - Calibri, Cambria & etc. - looked quite cool with ClearType on.. so i was wondering where to get the "Calibri" font, is it available separately on Microsoft's website.. does anyone knows anything about its availability?

Josh:
Here you go.

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