Vista and the Microsoft Office 2007 are designed for puerile, gum-chewing, gum-popping teenies and 20-somethings who are more interested in thoughtless and undisciplined blogging, posting to MySpace and generally doing little substantive.

None of those new products are for serious business. We have started scraping Vista off the two relatively new HP Pavilions and installing Office 2003. Were pulling the trial Office 2007 versions and replacing them with Office 2003 as well. Based on the advice of an incompetent consultant, we bought copies of Outlook 2007 and its junk. Were trying to figure out how to recoup our costs.

This move to Vista and these new products are an insult to the intelligence of serious business people and the lack of options by HP, Microsoft and others (Dell, noted, but I wont deal with anyone crawling in bed with Wal-Mart).

George Schwarz, publisher/editor
The Amarillo Independent
Amarillo, Texas

will 07 run on xp?

First, I run a newspaper that calls them as we see them.

Second, my remarks werent slanted because I experienced the software.

Third, OK, if no opinions, here are some specifics:

The Word macros, which worked in Word and Outlook, using Word, didnt convert over. Youll have to re-enter all your macros.

If youre working with design or layout software, youll have to me very careful to maintain the Word format instead of the newer format.

Youll have to adjust to all new toolbars, and they are pretty different. Oh, unless you want to drop another $30 for an add-in that makes the 07 toolbars look like 03 again. Lets see, that brings the costs to what? Close for $500. For that kind of money you have to buy an add-on?

The packages for 2007 suites make no logical sense for someone who wants a basic system. Please show me the name of an 07 suite that had simply Word, Excel, Access and Outlook. No, they load it up with the other crap you dont need.

Those things are just Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer sticking a middle finger right in your eye.

You can try to mitigate the insult of calling me slanted with a smiley emoticon and an LOL, but youd have been more accurate to have called me angry angry at big corporations taking advantage of consumers.