Charting the Upgrade Path from DOS 5.0 to Windows 7

I have to disagree slightly as I was a many year user of MS Office XP since 2002 (sometimes called 2002, very similar I am told to 2003, but not 2007), and for a recent job I had to buy a copy of 2010.

I must say I am very happy with the features of 2010 and the help function is really good and it also gets online help if required. It has helped me a lot!!!

I find that 2010 is far easier to learn than 2002 was years ago.......it also runs far faster on the same PC/Laptop I find......many functions like making an Index are far easier to understand and get working (I never got it to work properly on 2002!!).

I do recommend anyone learning 2010 to persevere with it. I do believe the Ribbons were first used in 2007, but as I have never seen 2007 in use, I cannot be absolutely certain of that point.

The "Ribbons" take some getting used to and not everything is where you might expect it, but it does have its own logic once you know......

By the way, I managed to purchase from a distributor in the USA, a copy of MS Office 2010 Plus for $80.00, which is the only 2010 with ALL functions enabled.......I got sent a MS download address and the serial number, it logged onto MS and was correctly validated....Just the 2010 Professional in German from a normal shop costs over €500 in Germany (but with a DVD and handbook).....but there are some cheaper offers on ebay....

Posting as "Off Topic".

I gave you an OT vote, because I think your comments are definitely valuable...

My own experiences date back to Windows 3.1, which I switched to from a Unix-based PC for compatibility with co-workers (the HP-UX system, running on a Motorola 68004 was by far the fastest computer I have used!), and I followed on with MS through 96, 98SE and XP- XP being the "upgrade" that convinced me that there had to be a better way. My early explorations of Linux convinced me that switching to Linux was not for the feint of heart- but that has changed, since about 2007. Now, loading a Linux operating system is so much easier than building a Windows box from scratch, there is no contest...

The driver issue has been around since at least Windows 95, when there was a lag between the release of the new versions, and when providers of peripherals (printers, modems, sound cards, serial/parallel/GPIB interfaces, etc) would finally release updated drivers...

My first, and by far most favorite, Windows-based word processor was WordPerfect 5.1- with WordPerfect 6, they switched to a Wysiwyg style that was painfully slow (having to pause to let the screen update catch up with my typing!). Again, peer pressure ultimately drove me to Word and the rest of the MS Office suite...

MS reached their pinnacle, in my opinion, with Windows 98SE and Office 2000. They lost me when I figured out upgrading my old Windows 98SE setup to XP would set me back in excess of $5000, because I would also have to upgrade a whole lot of other software, not just the MS stuff, and replace some perfectly good hardware because drivers were not available for a lot of the "legacy" stuff I still use. One painful example was Peachtree accounting software, which I was using back in those days (I have since switched to Gnucash, an OpenSource alternative that is just as versatile and much more stable than Peachtree was, back when I used it).

A brief look at MS Office 2003 convinced me that the learning curve required to migrate to the newer version was more than I cared to invest, especially since I could see no way that the "improvements" actually enhanced my productivity...

I still use Excel 2000 (in both VirtualBox running Windows 98SE, in Wine, and on the two Windows boxes I still maintain (one running Windows 98SE and one running XP), and it is still the fastest for what I do (although a recent trial of LibreOffice Calc suggests they may be catching up). My test is pretty simple- a spread sheet of about 6000 pairs of readings. imported from a *.csv file, and do a simple scatter plot. Excel 2003 is considerably slower than Excel 2000. Try rescaling the plot or editing the titles or labels- again, all but Excel 2000 (and the new LibreOffice suite) are painfully slow...

LibreOffice also seems to have caught on to a major frustration I have with newer versions of Word or OpenOffice, related to the "auto formatting" function- run a spell check, and the illustrations/objects start moving all over the place, sometimes getting so lost that I have to start all over again. Once more, LibreOffice seems to have solved this little aggravation...But I may still find myself going back to LaTex, which works more like the old WordPerfect 5.1- things stay where I put them!