Way back in April 2009, I posted a piece on CIO.com titled “Office 2007 Doesn’t Really Suck; It’s Just Misunderstood.” Little did I know it would create such a fuss.
Over the past 11 months, the piece has received a smattering of comments, many of which are tinged with vitriol. Office 2007 doesn’t just suck, according to CIO’s readers; it’s reviled, despised, detested, loathed.
Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version of Office is hardly a political move.
Here’s a sampling of the comments:
“I’m a longtime Office user (since its inception). Office 2007 is an abomination and shows just how out of touch those developers are with real world use and workflow.”
“Thought my suckage meter was just already broken or something, it being beyond the warranty period, but as the 10 or so days went by from having installed this step backwards in software development, and having not latched onto what I had assumed was some kind of groundbreaking innovation in GUI, I started to suspect that Microsoft’s product itself had gone beyond the limits of my suckage meter and broken it… and everyone here has affirmed that.”
(That previous commenter called Office 2007 an “emotional disappointment” and offered an SAT-style analogy: “MS Office is to ‘misunderstood’ what Charles Manson was to ‘goofy.’”)
The readers are angry with Microsoft, and used the comments section to vent. They took umbrage with what they perceived was my defense of the Ribbon. And I’m OK with that.
Here’s my take (you can retract your claws for a moment): There are plenty of things wrong with Microsoft’s Office 2007 product. We could create an entire social community focused on sharing what we think is unintuitive about its software. (They may already exist.) However, a large portion of businesses uses Microsoft, and many people learned basic computing skills on Microsoft software. (Personally, I dropped out of a FORTRAN class in college because I didn’t see its practicality. I opted to study Spanish too, instead of the languages I really wanted to learn — Icelandic and Swahili.)
So they are stuck, for now at least. I think Office 2007 was a much-needed slap on the back of the head for IT leaders. Complacency is not an option anymore, not in this economy.
If they have migrated or are about to migrate to Office 2007, they cannot treat it like any other upgrade. Employees will need assistance in order to keep productivity at pre-migration levels.
Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version is hardly a political move. It’s like not paying your AT&T bill because you think their 3G sucks. Nothing will change — except your service, which will be shut off.
Likewise, taking the martyr approach (We can do it alone! We’ll face the learning curve together!) will get companies nowhere.
If you really despise Microsoft, take a actual stand and find an alternative.
Just be sure to call us when you need software support.
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