Yes, I know of all the complaints that portmanteau products like Microsoft Office are much too big, too complex, and contain hundreds of features that most people don’t need and will never use.

Granted. But that’s the nature of the beast. Try using Google Documents and Spreadsheets for anything more than simple projects. And you need to be online to use them.

I’ve had Office 2007 for a couple of months now, and while I haven’t yet got round to trying out every program bundled in there, I have to say I’m very impressed. I came to it directly from Office 2000, so missed the intermediate experience of the 2003 version.

At first, the so-called Ribbon feature was a bit baffling, like all supposedly intuitive controls are. But once I found my way around the different groupings of features and learned what all of the icons stood for, I began to revel in its clean simplicity and ease of use — I’m usually wary of geeks being “intuitive”, because more often than not, they’re not.

However, Office 2007 is a triumph of design and utility. Nowadays, we expect software will be over-engineered, just to get ahead of the competition, but invoking dread and misery in customers, who have to surmount a huge learning curve to get it working satisfactorily in their interests.

I’m not going to go into fine detail here — that’s for another day — but I believe Word to be the best word processor around now, and Excel to be irreplaceable. No, I haven’t got Microsoft shares, and I don’t speak with forked tongue.

Smaller features too stand out. Like most folk I don’t need the massive clout of Photoshop for my image handling activities. But I do want something better than the cheaper programs out there. One surprise is the Microsoft Office Picture Handler which comes bundled in with the Office suite. It really is a doddle to use and has all the functionality I need, without the baffling overload of some other programs.

I’ll be returning to this review in more depth later, but first impressions are : well done Microsoft.

It’s not often you hear that, is it?

Syntagma Digital has had Windows Vista for more than a month on brand new kit intended to replace our XP boxes here in the office. Previous posts (here and here) described our initial experiences, so I won’t trawl through them again.

Although we still have our XP machines running alongside the new Vista boxes, the proportion of usage by time has swung massively in favour of Vista. We’re now using the V-machines for 90 percent of the time.

We’ve finally got our printers working after a hiatus when nothing we did worked. Even now some applications won’t print from Vista even though they work well in other respects. There are still a lot of error messages flying around. But gradually the bugs are being overcome.

Everything else is now happily done on the much faster, number-crunching, new computers. Of course, we’d switched a lot of stuff online before moving over : all email is now done on Gmail — a huge relief on new computers — and much else too. I’ve even taken to using Google Documents for smaller jobs, but can’t quite get myself to use the spreadsheets, especially as we now have Office 2007 Excel working on Vista.

Thankfully, our desk-top-publishing program works seamlessly on Vista, but not the image-handling one. As a temporary measure I’ve been using the Office image software bundled with Windows itself. It works so well, I’ll probably stick with it for the duration, except for major Photoshop-type operations, which we rarely need nowadays as we employ a professional designer in that area.

Apart from that, the increase in performance is so good, we stifle a groan every time we have to use the XP machines.

I know a number of our readers are looking for new computers with XP pre-installed, as they don’t trust Vista yet. Let me tell you, put your doubts aside. Get as much as you can online — Google is a blessing here — and you won’t look back.

Be aware, though, that the “Protection Mode”, which is the default setting for Vista, may have to be temporarily shut down while you add new stuff or get your broadband connectivity working. Thereafter, it’s surprising how quickly you will adapt to the loss af admin powers, which is what it effectively does.

Our advice? Go for Windows Vista now. There’s nothing to keep you on XP but fear of the unknown.

I’ve had Windows Vista for a month now on brand new computers intended to replace our XP boxes, which are still running alongside the new Vista machines.

However, the proportion of time spent on Vista has increased to 90 percent and more. The exceptions are jobs which require the printers. None of the old ones will work with Vista, so I’ll be replacing them very soon.

Of course, I’d switched a lot of stuff online before moving over : all email is now done on Gmail — a huge relief on new computers — and much else too.

Thankfully, the desk-top-publishing program works seamlessly on Vista, but not the image-handling one. As a temporary measure I’ve been using the Office image software bundled with Windows itself. It works so well, I’ll probably stick with it for the duration.

I know a number of people are looking for new computers with XP pre-installed, as they don’t trust Vista yet. Let me tell you, put your doubts aside. Get as much as you can online — Google is a blessing here, buy new printers, tweak your internet connection, and you won’t look back.

The “Protection Mode”, which is the default setting for Vista, may have to be temporarily disabled while you add new stuff or get your broadband connectivity working. Thereafter, it’s surprising how quickly you will adapt to the loss af admin powers, which is what it effectively does.

My advice? Go for Windows Vista now. There’s nothing to keep you on XP but your fear of the unknown.

Vista Office will be receiving a complete redesign and makeover in the next week or two. Apart from upgrading to Wordpress 2.1 — the latest version — it will receive a brand new designer styling (pictured) by Thord Hedengen.

As this site is affiliated to our 21st-Century Phi network magazine, the colours will be blue based but similar in styling to the example shown above.

There may be some disruption to service while this work is carried out, and fresh posts will be delayed for a few days.