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MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

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IainB:
My suggestion would be to "jump in and take a swim!", and at less than $10 it is incredibly cheap.
In the world of software, one can often be surprised - once one has overcome one's natural inclination to resist/reject the new/change - to find that actually, the newer does have its benefits and seems to have fewer of the disadvantages of the old.
There are exceptions, of course - InfoSelect 10 might be a recent example of such an exception.

Luddite-like, I sometimes have found it very difficult to change my ways and use/apply newer technology or theories. In business school we were taught that business processes could only be viewed in one way (the BPMN way). Then I found myself pushed into a corner because the old way was not working for my client, and if I didn't find an improvement on it, then I stood to lose us a million-dollar contract. Quite by chance, I stumbled upon the IDEF0/3 methodology and a CASE tool that enabled one to model a process using that methodology and integrate it with data models. I hated it because it was different to what I knew was "the right way", but after immersing myself in it and forcing myself to understand it, I was able to independently prove the benefits, and from that point on I could never go back to the old ways. It would have been like going back to using a pick and shovel to excavate a building site, after having learned how to use an excavating machine.

dr_andus:
My suggestion would be to "jump in and take a swim!", and at less than $10 it is incredibly cheap.
In the world of software, one can often be surprised - once one has overcome one's natural inclination to resist/reject the new/change - to find that actually, the newer does have its benefits and seems to have fewer of the disadvantages of the old.
-IainB (January 28, 2014, 06:40 AM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks for the encouragement. But my issue is not a fear of the new but a fear of having to spend time and effort uninstalling a massive piece of software (and reinstalling the previous version) that doesn't add much new to the features that I use. That would be more expensive to me than the software. I also have some Add-Ins that may get messed up through such an install/uninstall/reinstall. Even if it was free, I'd think twice about it, considering that I already have Office 2010 and it works fine for my purposes.

Having said that, Hewson's blog posts are encouraging. I was just wondering if there are any other writer-types here or out there who have upgraded from Word 2010 to 2013 and found it a positive experience.

IainB:
...my issue is not a fear of the new but a fear of having to spend time and effort uninstalling a massive piece of software (and reinstalling the previous version) that doesn't add much new to the features that I use. That would be more expensive to me than the software. I also have some Add-Ins that may get messed up through such an install/uninstall/reinstall. Even if it was free, I'd think twice about it, considering that I already have Office 2010 and it works fine for my purposes.

Having said that, Hewson's blog posts are encouraging. I was just wondering if there are any other writer-types here or out there who have upgraded from Word 2010 to 2013 and found it a positive experience.
-dr_andus (January 28, 2014, 09:22 AM)
--- End quote ---

Ah, thanks for explaining that. I think I might understand what your concerns are now. There are two points I would make:

* (a) Leave yourself an easy backout strategy: I have nowhere seen it recommended as being necessary/mandatory that you have to uninstall an earlier version of MS Word or MS Office as a precursor to installing a newer version. In my case, for example, I had MS Office 2007 installed, and never paid much attention to (saw no need for) upgrading to v2010. However, v2013 had some singularly important differences in features/benefits from my perspective, and because I was unsure whether I would like using the newer version, I simply installed MSO v2013 and left v2007 undisturbed/unchanged (still installed and operational). In fact after installing v2013, I double-checked that v2007 was still fully-functional. All that the v2013 install really did was change the file extension default opening settings (for MSO-related documents) to be handled by v2013 applications.  (By the way, the install was on 2 laptops with Win7-64 Home Premium.)


* (b) Test the new version implementation: I then spent time running through some standard test scripts with each of the applications in MSO 2013, trying to compare/understand the differences to v2007 and make sure it worked at least as well as the predecessor. Some conclusions I arrived at included:

* that Excel had finally (at last!) been incredibly well-changed to more easily and better manipulate large tables/arrays and with reduced risk of error - almost idiot-proof. It is still being improved in successive ongoing updates.

* that OneNote was actually much improved in functionality and ease-of-use (ergonomics and the GUI interface), but needed getting used to (I didn't like it at first, anyway), but that the display colour-schemes sucked badly ergonomically (perceptual disorganisation/confusion - indistinct, washed-out fonts, and everything seemed to be a washed-out pastel colour with indeterminate line-and-colour-separation at the borders between differently-coloured areas...just some of the delights of the MS mandate for going Metro for Tablet use and Windows 8, I presume...
_________________________________
So, you can compare Word v2010 to v2013 in parallel, on the same PC. Easy to take a "Suck-it-and-see" approach, and without any real risk/difficulty.

As to the earlier suggestion that v2013 could somehow - in part or whole - be better than or make Scrivener redundant, I am not so sure. It would all depend on one's requirements. They are two quite different tools, after all.

wraith808:
Actually, a lot of the features that he's talking about from Word 2013 were in Word 2010.  I tried it for a while, then after trying it, tried to fix the fact that I didn't want the huge monolithic document and give back my corkboard which I missed by utilizing writing outliner (excellent tool, BTW if you're going with this).  But in the end, I'm back to Scrivener.

dr_andus:
So, you can compare Word v2010 to v2013 in parallel, on the same PC.
-IainB (January 28, 2014, 05:13 PM)
--- End quote ---

Oh, I didn't realise that. Thanks for clarifying. I thought it would overwrite Office 2010, and so I was worrying about having to uninstall 2013 if I didn't like it and re-install 2010. But if this is the case, then it is really a no-brainer...

It's GBP8.95 in the UK, btw.


But in the end, I'm back to Scrivener.
-wraith808 (January 28, 2014, 05:27 PM)
--- End quote ---

I wasn't actually looking to replace Scrivener. I do use Scrivener for some special jobs, but it's not my main writing tool. MS Word for me is a post-production tool, for finishing manuscripts, not for writing them.

Otherwise I do my writing in plain text in WriteMonkey. I suppose Gingko is my corkboard of sorts these days (also plain text and markdown).

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