windows version

Overall Rating: ( 60 reviews )

1. Posted: Aug 30 2008

   Having used MS Office for quite some time, I know that it changes with every version. In fact, that is part of the reason people update their software. In my case, I got kind of tired with my version of Office XP Profesional (Office 2002). I have to admit that I was worried about how many negative reviews this product recieved and I actually installed it seperately to keep XP in place (just in case). I'm not sure what everyone's problem is. I loaded it up and was happily doing my psychology homework in a matter of minutes. I haven't had any problems with it. It took about thirty seconds to learn where a lot of the new functions are and it has been pretty user-friendly to me so far. I'm not sure I like the layout as well as some of the previous versions, but I'm pretty happy with the upgrade. I would say that in their quest to make the product more "user friendly", they did the same thing that Windows XP and Vista did, that of course would be making everything pictures and icons; which for us experienced users, only adds extra steps. Still, I would say the majority of the programs included in the Office 2007 suite are intuitive and once you get used to the layout, you can get pretty fast with it. In some places, it is pretty darn convenient! To summarize, I'm not saying Office 2007 is the answer to all my hopes and dreams and the new interface does take a little getting used to, but the learning curve isn't THAT steep. Spend a couple minutes just trying to find things, use the little question-mark help feature and after a couple of days you should be back to blissful productivity...

2. Posted: Aug 26 2008

   This is a horrible upgrade from 2003. NOTHING looks familiar. You have to re-train yourself to use this. While I only paid $113 for this on eBay, this is the worst purchase I've ever made. Do not, Do Not, DO NOT upgrade from 2003... you will be sorry. Try to find a screen shot on google for Word or Excel 2007, THEN decide if you want to purchase it. This version doesn't even give you the option to revert to the old "look". No more File, Edit, View, Format, Tools etc at the top. You will stumble around blindly trying to figure this thing out. I'm spending another $150 to repurchase 2003. 2007 is WORTHLESS!!!

3. Posted: Aug 24 2008

   I have been using Office 2007 at work for about 4 months. I was using Office 2003 and they gave me a new computer with Office 2007 installed. They gave me no training on how to use the new version and it was quite a struggle to figure out how to use it. My job is demanding and I had no time to play with it and figure the in/outs of the program. To be honest I did not like it. It wasted too much time trying to complete what was a familiar task in the previous version. Based on this experience I would probably rated it 1 ?? stars. I believe my company should have provided at least some basic training. I had read the reviews of Office 2007 and knew the interface was completely different. If I had brought the software for my home system I would have taken the time to learn the ins & outs and I am sure my experience would have been different. I have read many user reviews of this product in Amazon that complain how hard it's to use and that Microsoft completely changed the interface. This is true if you were expecting Office 2007 just to be a minor upgrade to Office 2003. Microsoft in all their wisdom decided to completely revise and update Office. I think that is the root of many users complaints they want the old version back. I don't know if there is a compelling reason to upgrade for most people and maybe they should stay with Office 2003. Last night I downloaded the Office 2003 Trial to my home system and have spent many hours customizing and working with it. Some of the things I found out: 1. It's customizable and I am able to put all the commands I typically use in a Toolbar. 2. If I look at it as Office 2007 and not an upgrade to 2003 it makes a lot of sense. 3. The Ribbons really work when you get the hang of them. 4. I find it easier to work with the ribbons then the drop down menus. 5. The right mouse button gives you a lot more options I am sure that Microsoft can and will make improvements to Office 2007. It's not perfect and has it's faults. But after having time to customize it and play with it, I truly like it. This review is based mostly on Microsoft Word and some use of Excel. I will update the review as I get time and experience with the other modules. I give it a 4-star rating at this time.

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Overall Rating: ( 2 reviews )

1. ( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: May 12 2007

   I have used this program for awhile for sketching but really got to dig in this time and use all the artist tools. Very well done and I am even creating Hot Rod fine art pieces with it now. Amazing how everything works and its a lot of fun! Great Product!

2. ( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: May 10 2007

   Corel has improved on an already great product. Possibilities are unlimited!! Easy to use and learn.

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Overall Rating: ( 6 reviews )

1. Posted: May 10 2008

   I recently had the delightful experience of running the latest XP Service Pack 3 offered as a free upgrade from Microsoft. While Windows XP Professional already impressed me, SP3 makes this the most important OS ever created. With plenty of duds, Microsoft does manage to release a few gems such as Powerpoint, Excel, some really good games, and the Windows XP operating system. With SP3 Microsoft has hit a home run that immediately increases the value of tons of hardware (literally). This is due to the dramatic improvement in performance offered to this existing and otherwise depreciating hardware. To label this enhanced operating system "the best ever" is a reflection of how well it does in a multitude of categories ranging from multimedia to basic everyday use. Comparing mainly it to Linux and Apple's OSX I am surprised how well good old XP Professional is handling itself under pressure with the help of Service Pack 3. Add to that the multitude of compatibility with software and hardware and this becomes a "killer OS". After the upgrade to SP3 many systems with dual core processors will finally be given some justice. Lower latency allows audio professionals to make workstations out of budget systems. SP3 directly improves the way so many modern systems will handle music, audio, and video applications. Audio pops and ticks which have plagued early adopters of newest technology are reduced if not eliminated by SP3. A Windows XP system can be further streamlined to make the user's experience more snappy. Many tools are available to help people with common problems such as figuring out what all the processes running in the background are doing, and if they are needed. A customized XP system running SP3 will redefine your idea of how fast your good old computer actually is. Thanks Microsoft for releasing SP3 and continuing to support Windows XP.

2. ( 0 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Feb 8 2007

   Only recently have I discovered the OEM versions of Microsoft operating systems. OEM cost $130. Full cost $280. Regardless of what you pay you can only install on a single computer. Why give your money to Microsoft?

3. ( 9 of 12 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 11 2005

   If you're reading this. You want to upgrade, your old computer to Windows XP Professional Edition here are a few things to keep in mind. First thing is, you can download service pack two from Windows update. So no need to buy it integrated with XP. These are what I consider the minimum system requirements: 256 MB of RAM. I have found is adequate more equals better. 500 MHz or higher will do. 7200 rpm hard drive will help a lot. If you're running Windows millennium edition, or 98 upgrade now the stability is vastly improved. Gone are the blue screens of death. Frequently asked question: is Windows XP Pro better than home edition? Windows XP Pro has a more high-end networking features that most home users will never miss or would even know were missing. So for most users Windows home edition is fine. They both are based on the same code and are almost identical. If you're thinking of upgrading from Windows 2000, I did, because I like the GUI interface better. But Windows XP is as stable as Windows 2000. So it's your call. The plug-and-play ability of Windows XP is totally great! Windows XP will by default find most drivers for video card sound cards, network cards, etc. that is such a bonus gone in the days of having to search for CDs with drivers. I recommend upgrading to Windows XP be a professional or home edition. It is a great operating system Have some fun and get it done

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Overall Rating: ( 24 reviews )

1. Posted: Aug 30 2008

   I tread very cautiously into the world of Windows Vista... Had waited until this date (08/30/08) to take "the plunge"... I use an iMac with Bootcamp... First impression upon instaling Vista is "I'M SUPER IMPRESSED"... Smooth installation, smooth sailing... Of course, a slight learning curve having come from years, and years of WinXP, but even at that the "excitement of discovery" as I load software in... a few surprises, no doubt, as I found that my printer CD-Driver disc would not load as it was configured for WinXP; BUT NO WORRIES, as Vista popped up a balloon that gave me the link to the HP website so I could download the latest Vista driver for my printer... Printer working fine now... Right now I'm tackling the situation on how to transfer my Outlook Express mail backups that I performed throught ABF Outlook Backup, but I'm sure I'll find a solution to that... Worse comes to worse I'll just create a Virtual WinXP mode within the "Mac side" of my computer and access my old emails from there... All in all, I'm like a kid in a toy store with my newly found friend Vista... My PC is running smoother and I even found the internet to be cruising at faster speeds... Vista, I'm lovin' you as much as I've come to love my Leopard OS on the "Mac side" of my computer... Those complaining about problems with Vista, me thinks that they might lack a bit of tech savvy and become easily frustrated (just saying' ya know?)... Vista Business is a homerun!

2. Posted: Jul 10 2008

   What is Windows Vista? A faied Mac-wannabe. Honestly, I you're tryin to copy something. At least do it good! Windows Vista is slow with a whole bunch of annoying things that pop out at the most annoying tims. DO NOT buy it. I like XP much better....

3. ( 3 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 7 2008

   Do NOT believe all the knee-jerk garbage you're hearing about Vista, as 90% of it is being pulled out of thin air by people who obviously never even tried it. Linux and Apple trolls scour the internet for chances to add negative reviews to an operating system they'v never even tried. Then there are the XP hypocrites who have been using XP for so long that they fear anything new. Hypocrytes you say? Yup. This same negative "new Windows sucks" propaganda wave happened when Windows 2000 was released in 1999 (nobody wanted "NT") and again when XP was released in 2002 (incompatibility problems, verybody absolutely HATED that "Made by PlaySkool" interface). Everybody hated each of them until the next version of Windows came along. Then, suddenly, they LOVED the older version and tried to cling to it. Not only pathetic, but now very predictable. Vista is just the latest victim. I have absolutely no love affair with Microsoft, trust me. But it's time for an actual professional with a masters in programming and operating systems to set a few things straight. Fact: Windows Vista was in development a whole year before Windows XP was even released. Microsoft had been working feverishly on this OS for 6 years at the time of its release. Little id you know that nearly EVERY Microsoft product that comes out is extensively tested by a public usability testing program that is totally seperate from their beta testing program. Microsoft doesn't let anything out the door until all the usability testers (the general public that come to visit the Microsoft facility in Redmond, Wa) say they like it. Vista was OK'd by both internal and external beta testers in addition to the usability test program, or it never would have been released. I have personally done usability testing at Microsoft 17 times now (I like to get my 2 cents in), and I know how this process works. Microsoft releases software BY CONSENSUS, and Vista is what the people themselves ASKED FOR. Fact: For its entire life, the virus magnet that is known as Windows XP has been solely responsible for the onslaught of spyware, malware and waves of viruses. Not Mac. Not Linux. Not DOS. Not Unix. It was Windows XP. Prior to XP, Windows would see a problem virus come down the pike once in a while. Then XP came along, and we've been swimming in viruses and Malware ever since. Even loaded with antispy and antivirus software, WinXP STILL gets infested and slows to a blue-screening crawl. As you read this on your XP box, I guarentee that you have spyware on your system. Run a scan and see for yourself. If you're just running Windows Defender, I guarentee you're LOADED with it and don't even know it - get better software immediately. Fact: Though complaints about Vista's UAC are many, the Internet is not filled with Vista users begging to be saved from viruses and spyware they can't recover from. Those poor souls are pretty much all XP users. The Vista users complaing of any viruses and spyware are the ones who turned UAC off or clicked right past the UAC warning prompts without evn reading them. Fact: OF COURSE Vista is going to be slightly slower than XP on the same machine - just like Windows XP was slower than Windows 2000, which was much slower than Windows NT4, etc. etc. This is the natural way things are SUPPOSED TO BE AS HARDWARE GETS FASTER AND FASTER. C'mon, what do you honestly expect? New operating systems are about new features, not "running faster" on the same hardware (anybody that knows anything about operating systems knows that new versions are NEVER faster than the previous version, no matter what operating system it is - just take a look at any Linux distro or new version of any Mac OS). It's up to HARDWARE to make things run faster, not the OS. Your system is not fast enough to run Vista? THEN GET FASTER HARDWARE LIKE YOU HAD TO DO FOR XP. Has everyone forgotten that today's hardware is anywhere from 4-10 times faster than than the hardware that was available when XP was first released? And that XP absolutely crawled on our systems when it first came out and that we all complained about it? And that Vista runs at virtually the same speed as XP once booted up - only with tons of new features? And that soon you will need a new OS to even be able to operate the dual quads already on the market and the dual octo-core systems right arounnd the corner? C'mon, people, get a grip and get kick that common sense glad into gear. Fact: Since SP1 came out, Vista runs GREAT. I can run any Win32 program I want in Vista that I install, and as of SP1. I might even be able to run old 16 bit apps now, haven't tried that yet. Thanks to the freeware release of VDMSound, I am running old DOS games under Vista with full sound. I repeat - DOS games. Some of the few remaining software products currently being described as "Non-Vista compatible" can be made to work under Vista if you do a little reading and tweaking. Fact: Before SP1 came out for XP, XP ran like crap and had tons of compatibility problems. Everybody hated it, even the way it looks. Bet you forgot that. Fact: Turn UAC (User Access Control) off if you want Vista to behave like XP and not prompt you for confirmations. It's as easy as un-checking a checkbox in Control Panel (User Accounts). Note: This will drop Vista security down to the same "virus magnet/pants down" level as Windows XP, however, so you decide. The nice part is that you CAN decide. Fact: Are you a gamer? Then you already know that Direct3D (DirectX) 10 is Vista-only. All you XP gamers can sit in your own DX9 drool if you want to. Meanwhile, we Vista users are walking around in DX10 games that look like movies. You oughtta see Crysis with dual nVidias running SLI. Fact: Think you don't like Vista? Waiting for Windows 7 to come out in Q1 of 2010 (at the earliest without any of Microsoft's now legendary and predictable postponements)? You might be interested in knowing that Windows 7 is merely a re-packaging of Windows Vista - just like Windows XP was a re-packaging of Windows 2000 because 2000 didn't sell well (see for yourself at the command prompt - type "ver" and take note that Windows 2000 is Windows version 5.0 and Windows XP is version 5.1). Windows Vista is version 6.0. Dig up all the screen shots of Windows 7 you can find on the internet - take note that the title is "Windows 7" but the version number is 6.1. In other words, STILL VISTA. So get used to Vista. Better yet, GET Vista, or you'll eventually be two Windows versions behind when 7 comes out - which won't be until 2010 (at the earliest), and then that version of Vista will be around for 5 years until the next version. Vista's here to stay, folks. You have a choice of slipping into even more obsolescence with XP (which is just Windows 2000 with lipstick, a 9 year old product) or you can move forward with Vista and Win7. For me personally, Vista has been spoiling me rotten since SP1 came out. Every time I get up from my Vista machines and sit down on my XP machines, it feels like I'm sitting down on a machine in "Safe Mode". Vista makes XP feel old, limited, cumbersome and inadequate. The search functions of Vista alone remove all need for clicking through layers of start menus, even often allowing me to not have to touch the mouse - this alone makes XP feel like an antique. I wont even get into how cool Desktop Search is, SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, or the other many new features that make Vista MUCH faster than XP in many respects. Read that last sentence again, and then look those things up. You may commence drolling on your poor ol' outdated XP box's keyboard. BTW: No, I do not work for Microsoft, and I have been a huge Linux fan since 1997 (SUSE Linux, to be exact, version 11 is fantastic). I ignore the fact that Linux always takes much longer for apps to load up (and runs clunkier in general) and that both KDE and Gnome always seems to look/work a lot like the latest version of Windows.

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Overall Rating: ( 39 reviews )

1. Posted: Jun 18 2008

   I have countless issues with Vista Ultimate-without Service Pack 1. My "Vista-certified" hardware is always having trouble functioning. Downloading new drivers has proved futile. I fix one problem, and then another shows up. I thought this was supposed to be an improvement over XP? What a downer... Get a Mac, they work far better.

2. Posted: May 29 2008

   They took away all the things you were used to and replaced it with slowness. Why???

3. Posted: May 27 2008

   There are some quirks to Vista. It's not always very intuitive either. But then again all things have some learning curve to them. Generally I have been very happy with Vista. If I had to guess why there are so many problems with other users is they use Vista as an upgrade, not bothering to flattening/formatting their hard drives and beginning afresh. There are plenty of tips that can be found online to solve most problems otherwise and most of these tips are just familiarizing people with Vista. The only real compliant I have about Vista Ultimate, and maybe all the Vistas, is that although you are listed as the administrator, you're a protected administrator without true full rights. I used Spybot SnD and it would not allow me to remove all the adaware because I was not a true administrator. Only after unlocking the full rights and logging on the true administrator could I remove them. YUCK and what a pain.

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Overall Rating: ( 7 reviews )

1. Posted: Jun 13 2008

   As much as I like Vista, and I do have Vista-64 on my media computer, I still like using XP-Pro on my work computer. It is solid as a concrete highway without fast running water under it (in other-words, it does have its vulnerabilities), but far better than any other windows product out there.

2. Posted: Oct 1 2007

   The version of the software was an OEM version that was only valid when installed on a new computer direct from the manufacturer. It required a volume licensing agreement which a stand alone user would not have. Apparently this company was trying to pull a fast one. Don't buy anything from these people.

3. ( 0 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 18 2007

   Review not necessary, outstanding product. If you are running Home Edition, I would recommend upgrading to XP Pro, if you can afford it.

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Overall Rating: ( 36 reviews )

1. Posted: Aug 27 2008

   I ordered Windows XP and it arrived a lot sooner than expected. It was wrapped in its original packaging just like they said. However, after about 3 days it started to act weird. I have a Mac and am using bootcamp. So, when I would switch to Windows, a message would pop up and tell me it was unable to start Windows without a system check. Fortunately,the message stopped popping up a couple days later. I know that this isn't caused by the people I ordered Windows from; they were great! Just know that their may be errors after you install the disk.

2. Posted: Jul 28 2008

   I purchased this version of Windows XP to use with VM Ware Fusion. Everything was easy to install and I quickly updated XP to SP3. The software comes clean and free of any adware that you find in Sony Vaio or HP computers. If you need XP to run on your Mac this is a great way to run Windows through VM Ware of Parallels.

3. ( 0 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 25 2008

   I bought this software expecting to install it with no problem on my MacBook like others here have claimed. The package didn't include the Certificate of Authenticity (COA), so I called the retailer... they told me to contact Microsoft. So, Ted at Microsoft tells me that this is pirated software since it only costs $89. So, either Microsoft is completely nuts (probably true) or this software that Amazon and others are trying to sell is illegal. UPDATE: I found the COA sticker in my trash can stuck to the shrink wrap. Problem is there's a note in the package that says "READ THIS FIRST" and has a diagram showing the COA is on the back of the manual. Ignore this note.

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