Eric

Member since: Sep 17th, 2005

Eric's Latest Comments

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Download Squad	4 Comments

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Do You Need Office 2007 in Your Small Office? (Download Squad)

Feb 23rd 2007 2:51PM I use Office on a daily basis and have for over a 8 years. I have been using Office 2007 B2TR since its release and I feel that I must pronounce my joy in using it.

Comments: I am not sure which application you referred to regarding Tables, but I am going to assume Word. I don't think there is a valid arguement to be made that the manner in which tables are created and managed in 2007 is worse than 2003. There was nothing more cumbersome and frustrating to use than table management in older versions of Word. The abily to see immediate changes to your tables in 2007, whether it be the initial creation of the table or the formatting, made my life a lot easier. In the past I would paste links to Excel docs to save time but I have now moved these using pieces of information back into Word.

But that is just a small benefit among everything else you are get from 2007. How about the one million rows in Excel 2007 and many more columns? In my enterprise, I anticipate majob Business Intelligence changes because of this feature. I was also anticipating seeing many 30 MB excel files running around the office until I saw that the new Office document standard produces files 1/2 as large as their 03 counter-parts.

As for the "Home" button, I am not sure why you think this is an extra click? I click on "Home" and I get to save, save-as, etc. In addition we also get context to the commands that will surely help those transition away from the pre-07 products or save their new docs into the 97-03 format.

Detractions: I will say that I was surprised at seeing the hot-keys change even if the old methods work. "Alt-S, V" was a friend of mine in all versions of excel and I am still not sure where in the menu it exists.

I grant that I might not be a typical user of these products and my opinion is tempered somewhat by the knowledge that many people I work with will make this transition in the next 6 months. I anticipate an inital transition period that might prove painful for some. But I also anticipate that these users, who live in Office products, will get their money's worth from them in short-order.

RSS Readers: SOUND OFF! (Download Squad)

Jul 21st 2006 4:28PM In Opera, RSS feeds are neatly integrated into the browser, providing you a simple process to subscribe when surfing and, most importantly, not burdening you with too many installs after a reimage.

Ten free-or-cheap productivity tools (Download Squad)

Jul 21st 2006 10:40AM Some of these comments are parochial, IMO, regarding the GMail and Google Desktop and can be replaced by email and "any search tool". I would also add that a simple way to cull this list would be to use MS Onenote which is a D*I*Y note taking system that does not impose any preconceived notions upon you. Ultimately, people might disagree for M$ (read: knee-jerk) reasons, but after using Onenote for two years (and the beta for the past few months) I find this program's ease of use and lack of ramp-up time to be its largest assets.

Schwab tells Quicken users to change passwords (Download Squad)

Sep 17th 2005 12:03PM The article didn't specifically mention the word "compliance" but Schwab's request for password renewal rings familar after having spent considerable time these past two years dealing with Sarbannes-Oxley. Many of the SOX related initiatives at my company turned into enterprise standards which may be the case here. YMMV.