I bought a cheopo new laptop from Dell. Their customer service is horrible. The laptop is ok. But it comes with Vista  - I thought this was probably the most evil thing that M$ had ever created. But then I downloaded a trail version of Office 2007. One of my teenagers has been using Safari so I’ve downloaded that and try to pretent I’ve got a Mac. 

Bizarrely, one of the reviews of Office 2007 claims it was developed after extensive user testing and hours of observing users. Who????

As usual, the help bears no relation to the actual application, as if they were developed in isolation from one another in separate countries using different languages. 

Which begs the question - why can’t someone develop an EASY TO USE word processing package? Surely most of us just want to be able to write letters, reports, notes, chapters of a book….and er, that’s about it. I don’t think I’ve ever used more that 5% of any word processor and I doubt I ever will. So it’s even more curious that Office 2007 has been developed with so many buttons visible, crowding and oppressing the screen. 

I’m also beginning to suspect that the reviews on Amazon have been hi-jacked by corporate communications departments. I can believe the 1 and 2 star reviews of Office 2007, but for some reason the 5 star reviews seem rather implausible. If they have been hi-jacked then it’s another lurch towards commercial interest for the internet. 

It’s all very frustrating. It’s become much easier to publish to the web using blogs and so on; there’s a whole layer of social networking that’s fairly idiot proof to use and understand; but operating systems and word processors seem to have gone backwards. I’m genuinely puzzled.