Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition Upgrade

New context-sensitive smart tags pop up with options you need--right whenyou need them. No digging through menus. Tasks that once required multiplesteps are just one click away with the new task pane. New and improved tools in Access allow you to build and manage lists and databases, or analyzeinformation from databases such as Microsoft SQL Server.

The new version of Outlook in Office XP Professional condenses all your personal and professional e-mail into one central location, even your Web-based e-mail accounts like Hotmail. With AutoRecover, your work is saved at regular intervals while you work. PowerPoint includes animation effects and custom slide transitions. An editable print preview assures that your printed slides anddocuments come out right the first time.

Microsoft Publisher 2002 provides professional page layout and text toolsto help you create compelling marketing materials for your business.FrontPage 2002 lets you create exactly the Web site you want withgraphics-rich, hyperlinked, sound-enabled Web pages. New tools andfeatures like automatic Web content, PowerPoint-like drawing capabilities,a streamlined user interface, and optional HTML and XML reformatting makethis a complete Web site creation and management tool.

I use an Intel PIV 2.4 GHz with 1Gig DDR RAM with twin 80 WD SE drives, and an ATI 9000 Pro 128Meg video. There is not a lot of fluff apps loaded on this machine, because it is my primary business computer. Office XP Pro is amazingly much slower than Office 2000, especially Outlook. Between messages, it seems that it takes forever to load. Word is not used as my editor. Even with all the Service Packs (2) and updates installed. Even the machine performance degraded after installation. Prior to installation, speed wise, the computer would average 1100+ on pc pit stops performance test. Now, it averages 950+. Go figure...

Functionality is basically the same as Office 2000 with one exception, Photo Draw has been removed from Office XP. (One less useable app, more money for Ofc XP). The graphics in each app is improved in Ofc XP, but what does that really provide?

If you already have Office 2000 Pro, do not upgrade to Ofc XP Pro. Office XP Pro is definately not worth the additional $$$.
The only gain apparent is the improved graphic interface, but even that is not much, and not all that.


((((B-L-O-A-T-E-D))))   September 12, 2001
TestMagic Inc. (San Francisco, CA USA)
94 out of 110 found this review helpful

I've been using this software for about three months now and have installed it on seven or eight different machines that I maintain, and honestly, the best I can say is that the actual upgrade process is very smooth--this Office suite comes on one CD instead of two, it scans for previous versions, offers full installation options, and explains very clearly what it is doing. When I upgraded to Office 2000, the software took upwards of an hour; with XP, the upgrades took from ten to forty minutes, depending on the speed of the machine I was upgrading to.
You will first notice how nice everything looks and the new "Smart Pane," which is supposed to be a window with what Office thinks you will want to do. The contents of this pane include your most recently used documents and options to create new documents.
The menus look a lot like the DHTML effects common on many web sites--menu options are "highlighted" when you mouse over them. A few other things have changed, but the changes are mostly cosmetic.
The Smart Pane, which is really more of a "pain" than a "pane," is obtrusive to me--I am what is called a "power user," i.e., I use MS Office for about four hours a day, rely on it, and am very familiar with it. When I open an application, I want wide, open space. I often close the Smart Pane without using its features, instead opening documents the way I have for years-either by opening them from the Work menu I added or by clicking to them. This Smart Pane is supposed to close when you open something, but sometimes it doesn't, meaning I have to click to close it.
Worse, the Smart Pane automatically opens when you want to do something it thinks requires many options. For example, if I want to modify a style in Word, the Smart Pane appears and offers me myriad options for editing my styles. This whole process of opening the Smart Pane slows everything down (I'm running a Pentium III 933 mHz with 128 mb RAM and a 7200 rpm ultra ATA hard drive with relatively few applications installed; got to keep it clean!!).
Editing styles provides a good example of how bloated the software is. You may recall from Office 2000 that all the styles were either built in or created by the user. Now, however, XP creates new styles based on what it finds in your document. For example, if you have a italicized one of your Heading 1s, XP will show the regular Heading 1 style and the Heading 1 style with italics. Imagine how many such styles you might have in your document; with these new additions, XP has easily doubled or tripled the number of styles I must wade through to get the one I want.
XP slows down every machine it's loaded on. My oldest machine, a Dell Pentium 75 running Win 98, was still chugging along quite nicely, even with Office 2000 installed. Now, however, after I've installed XP on it, it moves so slowly that it's almost laughable-clicked buttons bubble up comically. The worst part is that the computer is much, much slower, even if I'm not using any of the XP applications. I guess there's too much XP stuff now running in the background.
I have a few gripes with Word, many related to printing problems, but one is particularly laughable, typical of Microsoft. Now, when Word crashes, it politely tells you that it has done so and offers to send a report of the problem to Bill. It swears that it won't send any personal data. The first few times I saw this, I thought, sure, why not, send it, maybe it'll help. Hah! Each time, without fail, my computer froze! So, instead of having just one program crash, I ended up with a frozen machine. Remember, I'm primarily using a new, major name machine with little other software installed. Learned not to do that real quick!
There is one change I do like in Word. Since I do a lot of editing for a living, I find the new style of showing comments much better than the previous method. In Office 2000, comments were shown as "sticky notes" that appeared when you moused over them. Now, however, the comments appear as neat rounded squares in the margin. They look good on the screen and they print out well for others to read.
Another major reason I upgraded was because of a fatal flaw in FrontPage 2000. I have detailed more of this problem in my review of FP2002, but essentially, FP2000 could not publish my web site because it was too large. I was hoping that the bundled FP2002 would have fixed that bug. It did, but it has other compatibility issues that MS hasn't been able to resolve with most web hosts.
My relatively low rating is for the upgrade, not for the overall quality of the product. The product, which crashes at least as frequently as Office 2000, seems to be no more functional than its predecessor, meaning that the upgrade is necessary only for those who want to have the latest thing. The best news is that I've learned how to take advantage of MS's support discussion groups. The answers and workarounds I found in those groups were a thousand times more helpful than MS's pitiful Help or canned tech support messages. Again: Don't pay for support-go to their support groups for help first.
In short, this is something of a "non-upgrade," and will most likely cause more problems than it will fix.


It is What They Left Out.   August 22, 2001
Dan Poynter (Santa Barbara, CA United States)
36 out of 43 found this review helpful

Office XP has a few new features but some of the things you have grown to rely on are gone.

For example, in File\Open, you used to be able to type in a word and every file with that word in the title would pop up. No more. Now you have to type in *word* to find your file.

If you are drafting documents in both Outlook and Word, the machine will still hang up. I could go on.

I have the newest and most powerful hardware and have all the MS-Office products. I have used them for years. I am not a Microsoft basher. I am just very disappointed in this product.

As a publisher, author of 28 Books, 109 revised editions, six translations and over 500 magazine articles as well as a consultant to the book publishing industry, I spend a lot of time using my computer. I need the best tools. Office XP is an expensive disappointment.

Dan Poynter, Para Publishing.


SOMEWHAT DISAPPOINTING   August 19, 2001
3 out of 13 found this review helpful

YEAH, THE XP VERSION HAS SOME NICE FEATURES, SUCH AS THE WINDOW PANES, ETC., BUT: WHY DID THEY HAVE TO GO & CREATE THE "FLAT LOOK" FOR THE ICONS ON THE TOOLBARS???!!!....WERE THEY TRYING TO SAVE ON MEMORY? I USE THE ICONS A LOT, & I AM USED TO THEIR JUMPING OUT AT ME FROM THE SCREEN. I TOTALLY HATE THIS "FLAT LOOK". I CAN'T SEE ANY OF MY ICONS AS WELL ANYMORE. OVERALL OPINION: SINCE THE FUNCTIONALITY IS BASICALLY THE SAME AS WITH "OFFICE 2000", I SEE NO REASON TO GO TO THE "XP" EDITION.