...because despite Microsoft delivering unto me gifts of fancy features and increased productivity, I cannot help but get rather wound up about some of the mistakes they've made.

I'm talking not about Vista - I have it, but it won't be installed for a while, having only very recently flattened my system - rather I'm bitching about the new Microsoft Office suite.

Office 2007, as it's known - which is unusual, seeing as 2007 is indeed the year of its release... something that's seemingly rare when it comes to software - brings with it some truly awesome features, but at the same time managed to swipe them out with some really annoying displays of what I can only put down to laziness and strop throwing.

But before I have a paddy, some background for you.

I used to run OpenOffice.org and Thunderbird for my office and e-mail needs. They worked pretty well most of the time, but on occasion OO.org just doesn't play ball with some .doc files and even though I've seen Thunderbird evolve greatly since I first used it at about version 0.6 (I think), it sucks for the volume of crap - I mean e-mails - I receive.

I decided, wise as (I think) I am, that it was time to upgrade to Microsoft Office. I say upgrade; I could have just got Office 2k and gone with that, seeing as I don't give two hoots about half the damn features they use as an excuse to release a new version of the Office suite. Instead, I told myself in the latter months of 2006 that I'd hang on for Office 2007.

So, fast forward to Office 2007's retail launch, and I grabbed the trial version. I didn't bother with the betas... I spend enough time debugging my own software; I really don't want to debug anyone else's. Hopefully it'll be available cheap for students before long, and hopefully I'll have grown to tolerate its shortcomings.

My first gripe

For me, Office is about Outlook. I can live with OpenOffice.org's issues more than I can live with Thunderbird's. So a smack to the face did I receive when I discovered that Microsoft, for some reason, didn't bother kitting out Outlook 2007 with the ribbon interface.

Well, they did but basically it's a half arsed attempt. All the child windows opened up from within Outlook use the (different, but actually rather cool) new ribbon interface, but the main window still has file, edit, view and so on.

I did know about it before I got hold of Office 2k7, but I didn't realise just how poor it made the thing look. For regular Office users, the ribbon will take some getting used to. So well done Microsoft for leaving part of the old interface behind in one of the most used parts of the suite, just to confuse users.

Maybe the guy who codes the menu for Outlook was taking a whizz when they were telling everyone else on the team to use the ribbon interface. I doubt it's any one person's fault though. In my opinion, the fact that Outlook breaks from the interface that is the standard across the rest of the suite, means it shouldn't meet quality control.

Microsoft shouldn't have let it be released like that, it's that simple. It's even better that Outlook's child windows do use ribbons. Way to make it even more confusing. They better bloody well release a service pack that allows me to enable the ribbon.

My second gripe

I can just about get over Outlook's interface crisis. I use such a variation of software that I'm pretty used to finding my way around whatever's plonked in front of me. But Microsoft's second cockup is nigh on unforgiveable.

They only went and used Word as the HTML renderer for e-mails. Let me repeat that... Outlook uses a word processor, NOT a web browser, to display WEB PAGES.

I tried scanning in a document with my mouse. My mouse is an optical mouse and so has a little digital camera on it, but it's cack at scanning documents. OK, I didn't actually try this, but I know it's possible.

My point is, why step back five years? I don't care why Microsoft chose to use Word to render HTML, they should have used IE7.

So now I have to decide what to do with the HEXUS.newsletter. Do I send it five years into the past, or leave it broken in Outlook 2007 and force people to view an online version? I'd rather not do either, thanks very much Microsoft.

I've run out of steam now, but at least I've got most of it off my chest. It's amazing how two errors can be so infuriating and almost completely ruin what is most likely Microsoft's best Office suite yet.

Maybe once the weather gets warmer I won't mind as much...