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Not excited.
CobraA1 13th Jan 2009
Not terribly excited. I'm not a big fan of webifying everything under the sun, and don't really see the big benefits of doing so.

The ribbon was very nice as it solved some real life problems, and from watching my parents and other people use it, I think it was a great move, despite some complaints about being so different and some lack of customization. It solved the problems it was designed to solve, and it's a lot easier to find the features you want in it.

After watching what people did with Office rather than what they complained about, I'm very convinced that the complaints are only temporary and that it was a very good move in the long run.

But Office 14? Big feature is the webified stuff?

Bah, that's just following the misguided crowd on something that's likely to be a fad.

To be honest, I think it would be nice to solidify their existing products. Allow a bit more customization to the ribbon (but NOT the "accidentally drag something to the wrong place" kind). Make Outlook a bit smarter at finding and removing duplicates created by poorly designed synchronization software. Make it handle IMAP timeouts better.

I think that Outlook would probably benefit the most from another look at the UI. It's decent, but I don't think it's there yet.

The functionality of Outlook is great, though. After hating it so much, I took a second look and I truly can't believe nobody else has tried to get into the PIM game. Mail, Contacts, Calendar, TODO list, Notes - it's all there, in one place. Everything is integrated and drag & droppable too. Works great with my mobile device as well, except the occasional time when it creates a lot of duplicates. Why has nobody else done this??

IMHO I think the best thing to do right now is to continue going strong in what Office does best.
ie8 fix

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