Ribbon Schmibbon

"Microsoft today released a "technical preview" release of Microsoft Office 2010, the next version of the world's most widely used application suite. The beta is available to anyone who preregistered with Microsoft for a chance to download and test it. After running it for a few days of intense testing, I'm impatient for the final release." This according to PC Mag.

The author of this article might be an eager beaver--he's paid to be. As a user in the trenches, I have a different take.

I've been using MS Word since 1983, (that's right, Word for DOS) and by version 2 it was a robust program that I'd written macros for to automate many functions. I'm a scriptwriter and 2 column was not something Word did easily back then. Early in it's upgrade path, all the macro's I'd written became incompatible, hours/days/weeks wasted. I learned. So when Office 2003 came bundled with my most recent hardware upgrade, I dug in. I'm a whiz at it, I have to be. But when I try to help colleagues with 2007 and its ridiculous ribbon interface, I feel like a moron. It's not nice to make your power users feel like morons. So I stick with O'03 because I see no benefit, no enhanced functionality that makes sense to my business. This from the guy who only upgraded from DOS to Windows when it became apparent that Windows allowed functions like faxing from applications that DOS required extra software and lots of difficulty to do. People and businesses who rush to upgrade should seriously examine how and if the pretty, new upgrade enhances their own productivity. You need to look past slick interfaces, pop open the hood and be able to tick off 2-3 "must have" innovations. Even if you find real productivity enhancers, you have to balance them against what you'll lose in orphaned functions and time wasted in a new learning curve. It bites the big one-it always has bitten the big one, that MS and other developers make you completely relearn the applications you need for your daily work every two to three years. If there are no compelling reasons to upgrade, then don't. Just say no. Dig in. Join the growing ranks of software skeptics. If everybody used the same "enhanced functionality yardstick" eventually even the big software makers would catch on.

Curmudgeonly yours,