2007 or 2k

I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista business
64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k or buy the latest
office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations and
figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of graphics and
thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I mainly
use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

Lamb Chop wrote:
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista
business 64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k
or buy the latest office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations
and figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of
graphics and thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I
mainly use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

Bearing in mind that this is only my opinion, and that I haven't tried
running anything on a 64-bit system yet...

I think you're a prime candidate to stay with the older version of Office
for a while. When you're in the middle of writing a thesis, the last thing
you need is to spend a couple of months figuring out where everything went
in the new user interface. This isn't a matter of speed or great new
features, it's a matter of reprogramming your brain and your fingers. After
your thesis is complete, you can get Office 2007 and spend all the time you
like on it.

Word 2007 has a new equation editor (although the old one is still there and
still works the same as before). It has the big advantage that the new
variety of equation is in some sense "ordinary text" that's just displayed
differently, while the old variety is an "object" that has to be interpreted
by an external DLL. When you put in hundreds, let alone thousands, of the
old-style equations in a single document, Word could become sluggish or
unstable. That shouldn't happen with the new variety. If you already have a
lot of equations, though, Word doesn't have any way to convert them to the
new variety -- they would remain as objects unless you manually retype them.

Another consideration: Office 2007 is only a couple of months past general
release, a period some people call "gamma test". :-) There will be a period
for at least a few more months while people install it in configurations
that were never seen in the beta test or in Microsoft's very extensive
internal testing, and find more latent bugs. Unless you're adventurous, let
others find them and wait for the first Service Pack.

Both the old Office and Office 2007 are 32-bit programs. All else being
equal, running them in a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit processor won't speed them
up. Indeed, it could make them slower, because every instruction has to be
converted from 32 bits to 64 bits and every result has to be converted back
to 32 bits (a process called "thunking"). On a new PC, particularly if it's
a high-speed dual-core processor, you probably wouldn't notice that penalty.
But there's no big advantage in 64-bit operation for Office, only for
programs that are compiled for 64 bit use.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

With little software around to take advantage of either 64-bit or
dual/quad-core processing, I'd recommend staying with your Office 2000 under
32-bit Vista for a while. Maybe in a couple of years time it will look
totally different, but unless you have some application that needs (and
supports) 64-bit and needs powerful processing on a multi-thread platform, I
think it is a little too early to take that route. It isn't just needing the
apps that support multi-thread and 64-bit, but you may find some hardware
drivers difficult to find.

Wait for more 64-bit support and DirectX 10 to come along.

--
Terry Farrell - MS Word MVP

"Lamb Chop" wrote in message
...
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista business
64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k or buy the
latest
office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations and
figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of graphics and
thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I mainly
use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

My own experience and view entirely. I have found Office 2000, with all
service packs, to be entirely stable and reliable. Posts here suggest that
all subsequent versions of Word (anyway) are not. I personally would not
risk any later version of Word. And, for the record I wouldn't trust Vista
either.

"Lamb Chop" wrote in message
...
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista business
64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k or buy the
latest
office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations and
figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of graphics and
thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I mainly
use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

Absolutely agree. One more thing to add. There are many instances where a
service pack is later found to be *itself* a disaster so I wouldn't even
rely on that until a good few years have gone by! Maybe to the Omega test
stage!

"Jay Freedman" wrote in message
...
Lamb Chop wrote:
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista
business 64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k
or buy the latest office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations
and figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of
graphics and thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I
mainly use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

Bearing in mind that this is only my opinion, and that I haven't tried
running anything on a 64-bit system yet...

I think you're a prime candidate to stay with the older version of Office
for a while. When you're in the middle of writing a thesis, the last thing
you need is to spend a couple of months figuring out where everything went
in the new user interface. This isn't a matter of speed or great new
features, it's a matter of reprogramming your brain and your fingers.
After your thesis is complete, you can get Office 2007 and spend all the
time you like on it.

Word 2007 has a new equation editor (although the old one is still there
and still works the same as before). It has the big advantage that the new
variety of equation is in some sense "ordinary text" that's just displayed
differently, while the old variety is an "object" that has to be
interpreted by an external DLL. When you put in hundreds, let alone
thousands, of the old-style equations in a single document, Word could
become sluggish or unstable. That shouldn't happen with the new variety.
If you already have a lot of equations, though, Word doesn't have any way
to convert them to the new variety -- they would remain as objects unless
you manually retype them.

Another consideration: Office 2007 is only a couple of months past general
release, a period some people call "gamma test". :-) There will be a
period for at least a few more months while people install it in
configurations that were never seen in the beta test or in Microsoft's
very extensive internal testing, and find more latent bugs. Unless you're
adventurous, let others find them and wait for the first Service Pack.

Both the old Office and Office 2007 are 32-bit programs. All else being
equal, running them in a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit processor won't speed them
up. Indeed, it could make them slower, because every instruction has to be
converted from 32 bits to 64 bits and every result has to be converted
back to 32 bits (a process called "thunking"). On a new PC, particularly
if it's a high-speed dual-core processor, you probably wouldn't notice
that penalty. But there's no big advantage in 64-bit operation for Office,
only for programs that are compiled for 64 bit use.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so all may benefit.

Hi Aalaan,

I think "many instances" exaggerates a bit. Between Windows and Office
updates, I can only recall one or two over the last 5 years that caused
problems on the scale of "disaster".

In the end, it always depends on a balance of risk and reward, and on your
personal risk tolerance. If an upgrade or a service pack offers enough
fixes, the risk for most people is small enough to make it worth at least
trying. If one is extremely risk-averse -- which sounds like it might be
your category -- then there's no reward that's worth any risk, and they'll
have to pry your obsolete software out of your cold dead hand. :-)

Fortunately, Microsoft has also gotten much better in recent versions about
making it possible to uninstall service packs and other updates. If it makes
something on your system stop working, you can remove it. I don't remember
well, but I think that's another thing you can't do with Office 2000.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Aalaan wrote:
Absolutely agree. One more thing to add. There are many instances
where a service pack is later found to be *itself* a disaster so I
wouldn't even rely on that until a good few years have gone by! Maybe
to the Omega test stage!

"Jay Freedman" wrote in message
...
Lamb Chop wrote:
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista
business 64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k
or buy the latest office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations
and figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of
graphics and thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I
mainly use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

Bearing in mind that this is only my opinion, and that I haven't
tried running anything on a 64-bit system yet...

I think you're a prime candidate to stay with the older version of
Office for a while. When you're in the middle of writing a thesis,
the last thing you need is to spend a couple of months figuring out
where everything went in the new user interface. This isn't a matter
of speed or great new features, it's a matter of reprogramming your
brain and your fingers. After your thesis is complete, you can get
Office 2007 and spend all the time you like on it.

Word 2007 has a new equation editor (although the old one is still
there and still works the same as before). It has the big advantage
that the new variety of equation is in some sense "ordinary text"
that's just displayed differently, while the old variety is an
"object" that has to be interpreted by an external DLL. When you put
in hundreds, let alone thousands, of the old-style equations in a
single document, Word could become sluggish or unstable. That
shouldn't happen with the new variety. If you already have a lot of
equations, though, Word doesn't have any way to convert them to the
new variety -- they would remain as objects unless you manually
retype them. Another consideration: Office 2007 is only a couple of
months past
general release, a period some people call "gamma test". :-) There
will be a period for at least a few more months while people install
it in configurations that were never seen in the beta test or in
Microsoft's very extensive internal testing, and find more latent
bugs. Unless you're adventurous, let others find them and wait for
the first Service Pack. Both the old Office and Office 2007 are 32-bit
programs. All else
being equal, running them in a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit processor won't
speed them up. Indeed, it could make them slower, because every
instruction has to be converted from 32 bits to 64 bits and every
result has to be converted back to 32 bits (a process called
"thunking"). On a new PC, particularly if it's a high-speed
dual-core processor, you probably wouldn't notice that penalty. But
there's no big advantage in 64-bit operation for Office, only for
programs that are compiled for 64 bit use. --
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

Hi Jay

If I'm just at the end of editing an 82,000 word manuscript and have 15
minutes 'til the deadline, stopping to unravel some service pack problem is
a disaster. I must have absolute reliability from a product. The trouble
with software is that we all sometimes get involved in it for its own sake
and we are all happy to experiment and chat about it. Me too at the mo
because I haven't got that sort of deadline on right now. But when I do
(which is often) I need a product that'll just work 100% of the time and not
trip me up. So there are two planes to this. I may well have the time to
investigate new software when not under pressure. But on the user plane I
certainly do not.

"Jay Freedman" wrote in message
...
Hi Aalaan,

I think "many instances" exaggerates a bit. Between Windows and Office
updates, I can only recall one or two over the last 5 years that caused
problems on the scale of "disaster".

In the end, it always depends on a balance of risk and reward, and on your
personal risk tolerance. If an upgrade or a service pack offers enough
fixes, the risk for most people is small enough to make it worth at least
trying. If one is extremely risk-averse -- which sounds like it might be
your category -- then there's no reward that's worth any risk, and they'll
have to pry your obsolete software out of your cold dead hand. :-)

Fortunately, Microsoft has also gotten much better in recent versions
about making it possible to uninstall service packs and other updates. If
it makes something on your system stop working, you can remove it. I don't
remember well, but I think that's another thing you can't do with Office
2000.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so all may benefit.

Aalaan wrote:
Absolutely agree. One more thing to add. There are many instances
where a service pack is later found to be *itself* a disaster so I
wouldn't even rely on that until a good few years have gone by! Maybe
to the Omega test stage!

"Jay Freedman" wrote in message
...
Lamb Chop wrote:
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista
business 64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k
or buy the latest office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations
and figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of
graphics and thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I
mainly use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks

Bearing in mind that this is only my opinion, and that I haven't
tried running anything on a 64-bit system yet...

I think you're a prime candidate to stay with the older version of
Office for a while. When you're in the middle of writing a thesis,
the last thing you need is to spend a couple of months figuring out
where everything went in the new user interface. This isn't a matter
of speed or great new features, it's a matter of reprogramming your
brain and your fingers. After your thesis is complete, you can get
Office 2007 and spend all the time you like on it.

Word 2007 has a new equation editor (although the old one is still
there and still works the same as before). It has the big advantage
that the new variety of equation is in some sense "ordinary text"
that's just displayed differently, while the old variety is an
"object" that has to be interpreted by an external DLL. When you put
in hundreds, let alone thousands, of the old-style equations in a
single document, Word could become sluggish or unstable. That
shouldn't happen with the new variety. If you already have a lot of
equations, though, Word doesn't have any way to convert them to the
new variety -- they would remain as objects unless you manually
retype them. Another consideration: Office 2007 is only a couple of
months past
general release, a period some people call "gamma test". :-) There
will be a period for at least a few more months while people install
it in configurations that were never seen in the beta test or in
Microsoft's very extensive internal testing, and find more latent
bugs. Unless you're adventurous, let others find them and wait for
the first Service Pack. Both the old Office and Office 2007 are 32-bit
programs. All else
being equal, running them in a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit processor won't
speed them up. Indeed, it could make them slower, because every
instruction has to be converted from 32 bits to 64 bits and every
result has to be converted back to 32 bits (a process called
"thunking"). On a new PC, particularly if it's a high-speed
dual-core processor, you probably wouldn't notice that penalty. But
there's no big advantage in 64-bit operation for Office, only for
programs that are compiled for 64 bit use. --
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

I never used 2000, but I have found 2003 about as stable as anyone could ask
for. About the only thing that will crash it is mucking about with a doc
imported from WordPerfect. g

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Aalaan" wrote in message
...
My own experience and view entirely. I have found Office 2000, with all
service packs, to be entirely stable and reliable. Posts here suggest that
all subsequent versions of Word (anyway) are not. I personally would not
risk any later version of Word. And, for the record I wouldn't trust Vista
either.

"Lamb Chop" wrote in message
...
I am going to buy a laptop next month. I would like to get vista
business
64bit. I am thinking whether I should use my old office2k or buy the
latest
office07.

I use word mainly for editing my thesis which has a lot of equations and
figures. The documents are usually fair large with a lot of graphics and
thousands equations.

excel for basic calculation and sometime drawing some graphs but I
mainly
use sigma plot, a scientific grapher.

Access for keeping up the basic data base.

Powerpoint, only occasionally. Once in every half year.



========
Any comments on comparing office2k and 07 would be appreciate. Will
office07 run better in a 64bit environment?

Thanks