2007 or 2k

Bill, that's 3 blank posts from you!

"Bill Ridgeway" wrote in message
...

If Lamb Chop were just starting their thesis, on the other hand, I would
recommend Word 2007 without hesitation. With lots of equations and figures,
a standard .doc format document is a corrupted document just waiting to
happen. In my year or so using the new .docx format (since early beta), I've
found it to be a lot more robust and a lot less corruption resistant than
the .doc format. I also find that .docx documents scroll and page a lot
faster than .doc format documents.

Depending on what kind of figures Lambchop means, the new graphics
capabilities in Office 2007 can produce some really sophisticated graphs &
charts, too. Those capabilities might ultimately mean that it takes less
time to prepare those aspects and getting them to look right.

Depending on how reference heavy the thesis is, the citation/bibliography
feature *might* be useful, but I find that it's more useful for lightweight
research papers than for heavy-duty academic papers.

Yes, Word 2007 is new. But, I use both it and Word 2003 daily, and I have
many fewer problems with Word 2007. More than once, I've actually been able
to repair documents that were hopeless broken in Word 2003 by using Word
2007's Open and Repair command. I would have expected it to be basically the
same as Word 2003's Open and Repair, but since my success rate is higher in
2007, I have to believe that it's been tweaked.

OTOH... if you're heavily invested in AutoText entries and rely on the
AutoComplete feature, Word 2007 might well be your worst nightmare.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
http://www.herbtyson.com
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
"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.

Oops! A lot MORE corruption resistant than the .doc format...

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
http://www.herbtyson.com
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
"Herb Tyson [MVP]" wrote in message
...

found it to be a lot more robust and a lot less corruption resistant than

I have used 2000, but 2003 is more stable and more graceful in recovery -
however, as with all software, it is not without issues - the most
irritating of which is in its random changing of settings stored in the
registry - that appear under tools options, but it can be bullied into
complying with auto macros. The changes to mail merge take some getting used
to also, but instability is not an issue.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
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


"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

Hi Aalaan,

On the other hand, when you're just at the end of a manuscript, you may be at the point where you find out that you just hit the
problem that requires the service pack you didn't install to resolve the problem. There isn't any software with 'absolute'
reliability, or 'Murphy' would be retired g.

===========
"Aalaan" wrote in message ...
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.
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Yes, agreed. But what I'm saying is that I use Word 2000 *with all its
service packs installed* (thanks to Jay) and it has always proved rock solid
for me. Whereas a bit of time on here shows innumerable problems with the
other versions *and* with some of the service packs some poor blighters have
put their faith in.

"Bob Buckland ?:-)" 75214.226(At Beautiful Downtown)compuserve.com wrote
in message ...
Hi Aalaan,

On the other hand, when you're just at the end of a manuscript, you may be
at the point where you find out that you just hit the
problem that requires the service pack you didn't install to resolve the
problem. There isn't any software with 'absolute'
reliability, or 'Murphy' would be retired g.

===========
"Aalaan" wrote in message
...
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.
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

XP already has the 64bit version for some time. I thought office07 have
64bit version too. Especially if 64 bit computer hardware and software
will be certainly dominate the next one or two years market. That is why I
consider to get vista64+office07. From the disccusion you guys have, I
think it is better to stick on office2k for a while.

Thanks for everybody.









"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.