Am I a luddite?

Last two versions of MSWORD (with document extension docx), are very different from earlier versions (with document extension doc). One of the changes is the new interface. I would vote against the new interface, if we had a referendum about it.

I would argue that the 2003 version was already a very good tool; we became very familiar with it. Learning the new interface, as in the 2010 version, is a burden not worth accepting. What is gained, by a typical teacher and student, is negligible in comparison with what was lost. How would you vote, and why?

The changes MS had made in MS Office forced me to switch to OpenOffice.org. Luckily MS Office 2003 does support new XML format after installing a compatibility pack so I'm not going to migrate to Office 2007 or 2010.

By the way I like the concept of styles of OO. While earlier versions were quite buggy and slow, OO is good enough now.

I use OO for all of my personal documents, convert .odt to PDF when I need to share my documents with others and MS Office 2003 is solely for common work with others. (There are some compatibility issues with .doc and .docx formats in OO.)

That's my vote against MS decision.

P.S. Now I'm going to learn LaTeX and use it for large and complex documents.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BlasW

The changes MS had made in MS Office forced me to switch to OpenOffice.org. Luckily MS Office 2003 does support new XML format after installing a compatibility pack so I'm not going to migrate to Office 2007 or 2010.

By the way I like the concept of styles of OO. While earlier versions were quite buggy and slow, OO is good enough now.

I use OO for all of my personal documents, convert .odt to PDF when I need to share my documents with others and MS Office 2003 is solely for common work with others. (There are some compatibility issues with .doc and .docx formats in OO.)

That's my vote against MS decision.

P.S. Now I'm going to learn LaTeX and use it for large and complex documents.

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And I started learning google docs. Then I discovered that their interface (and many other things) changed radically in July 2010. It means that most existing books, and online tutorial, are not helpful. Does someone know of a good reference, preferably on-line, that can help mew users. Learning by trial end error is usually not very effective. Thank you in advance.

I switched to the 2007 version a few months ago. It took me about a week to make the transition. I find the 2007 interface far more logical and quicker to use in 90% or more of the operations I carry out. I vote in favour of it.