MS Office can-do's and can't-do's

Alright, I admit it: I didn't have a logical reason for buying the home edition of "Office 2007". You know, the type of "I'm losing my job otherwise"-reason. But I was interested and as I only owned Word before, I think I made a good deal - overall, that is.

But, of course, every development means something is left behind. In the case of the new office - or rather the new Word, as I didn't have access to the other programs of the package (Excel, Powerpoint and One-Note) - I'm missing some of my favourite features (especially the option to view my texts as yellow writing on blue background while working on them - much more relaxing for my eyes). And I really do miss the old menus. I'm slowly getting used to the new outfit of 'my' Word, but it makes working on my texts a little bit more difficult.

I haven't worked with Excel in the past, but it did already come in useful and will continue to do so in the future, I think. It doesn't have the typical menu-structure any longer either, but as I didn't work with it before, I didn't mind it that much.

Powerpoint features in some plans for the future of my websites (but I won't tell now) and I've made some use of it, too.

What I've found most useful, though (apart from Word, as I'm writing something almost every day), is the one really unknown part of the package: One-Note.

For those of you who, like me, haven't heard about it before: It's sort of a digital notebook, meant to hold scraps of information of any kind, from pictures, sounds and movies to real written notes. It has helped me a lot to get a bit more organised (as if I really needed to, I'm quite organised already). I like that. In addition, it helps me gathering all my ideas at one point instead of having them in various files or even on bits of paper scattered all around my computer screen.

(The only thing I still need to organize now, is "Surely not Barbie's Diary". I know I'm really in need of some very good ideas.)

On the whole, the new office isn't bad and surely was worth the cost (or will have been worth it in a couple of months, when I've had time to make good use of all the programs). I would have wished for some less changes, but I can live - or at any rate learn to live - with them.