Microsoft in Good Software Shock!

I'm actually a reasonably big fan of Microsoft. They do, after all, in one way or another, account for a reasonable chunk of the family household, so I have to be nice.

   

That said, their software can be frustrating and don't get me started on Vista. However, praise where praise is due. Office 2007 doesn't suck as much as I thought it did. Ok, getting used to the Ribbon took a few minutes (but only a few) and actually most of it has turned out to be pretty intuitive once I stopped trying to find the ALT menus. The layout is clear and the new graphics pleasant to look at.

 

But what has impressed is places that have made me sit back from the keyboard and go, "Whoa! Dude. Cool." Well, maybe not, I'm English and from the home counties but you get the point.

 

The first WDC moment was when I found the OneNote tab in Outlook. Right Click on a calendar appointment in Outlook and it offers the option to go to OneNote. Selecting the option takes you to a prepared OneNote form ready for meeting minutes. Nice. Plus I've started to really get used to OneNote. It's a well thought out application that actually has moved me, to a certain extent away from the huge number of note books I used to use. It's increased my follow up productivity from Mobile World Congress a few thousand percent because I can cross reference my meeting Notes with contacts and add contact notes into OneNote and then put them in the client notes section on OneNote.

Nice.

 

Second: I was taking notes in meetings and clicked on the "Make Outlook Task" button. This didn't really work in OneNote 2003, but here – BANG – task appears in Outlook preformatted and including links to the original OneNote pages. Oh joy, where has that feature been all my life? Now I can rapidly and in meetings get the actions out to people from the same application.

 

The third happened a few minutes before writing this post. I was completing some notes and used Right Click on the notes to see if I could send to somebody by email (you can't, it's a Ribbon Button next to the Outlook task button) but I was given a "Blog This" option. So, I opened a new tab in my personal OneNote folders, clicked, was given the choice of my Blog Accounts and here it is.

 

Ohhh… and look, there's a little word count at the bottom of the screen. So here's to 500 words eh?

 

This might not be a shock to the Apple types out there, I understand from some Apple types I know that Office 2008 for Mac is seriously nice. Anyway, credit where credit is due. Office 2007 works. Kudos. Vista… well, there's always Service Pack 2…