Gah!
Things I already knew: Microsoft _really_ suck.
I decided while off work sick and a bit bored that I’d take a look at a demo of Microsoft Office 2007. I’d heard lots of things about it, and figured it would be interesting to see if there were any revolutionary new ideas in it.
I had already mentioned I was sick, and therefore not thinking clearly, right?
The Microsoft website provided me with a time limited demo of Office ‘Home and Student’ (I only really wanted to poke at Word and Excel). Apparently these demonstration versions of office are ‘fully functional’ but are time limited to 60 days. That seemed pretty reasonable to me - even the cheapest copy of Office is about $500 NZD, I can imagine people wanting to give it a good long test before investing in it.
After taking 20 minutes to download, Office took about half an hour to install on my Vaio laptop. The Core Solo chip is designed for long battery life and not power, but that still seemed excessive to me. Of course, the Vaio was being tormented with Vista at the time so it wasn’t running at it’s best. That’s another blog post in itself.
Finally, it was installed. I opened up Word with some anticipation but was immediately struck with how slow and cumbersome it felt. Unfortunately, I can’t really report on any of it’s actual features as Microsoft’s idea of a ‘fully functional trial’ is to grey out the ‘new’ and ’save’ options in the file menu. Yup, they’d disabled the ability to create or save documents. At all.
I figured after going to all that effort to download and install Office, I might as well have a bit of a play in the blank document pane that’s presented when you first open Word. Except it seems that was functionality denied a demonstration version as well - the program informed me that I could not make any edits as the selection was locked.
Time to download: 20 minutes
Time to install: 30 minutes
Time used: 2 minutes
Time waiting for the uninstaller to finish: 20 minutes
ammoir said,
May 3, 2007 @ 5:09 am
I am really sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with the trial version of Office 2007 Home & Student (RRP $299)
It sounds from your comments that the activation of the trial didn’t work properly or you didn’t activate it properly so this may be the issue of why it was running with reduced functionality.
I have had a look at the FAQs for Office Trial downloads and it says you must activate the software once you have downloaded it. There is also q and a’s on checking whether or not the software has activated properly.
http://newzealand.trymicrosoftoffice.com/faq.aspx?culture=en-NZ
Here’s couple of Q&A I found that could help you:
- What is a trial version?
A Trial version allows you to evaluate the 2007 Office release for a limited amount of time, typically 60 days. To use the Trial version, you must activate the software the first time you run it. Otherwise, the Trial version runs in Reduced Functionality mode. In Reduced Functionality mode, your software behaves similarly to a viewer. You cannot save modifications to documents or create any new documents, and additional functionality might be reduced. No existing files or documents are harmed in Reduced Functionality mode. Full functionality returns when you activate the software.
- Where can I locate the 25-character trial product key to activate my trial software?
During the download process you received the 25-character trial product key on the “Download” and “Thank you” (it’s recommended that you bookmark this page) pages. You may also find the product key in your Thank you e-mail sent immediately after the download completed.
I hope you manage to run the trial successfully with these tips. Otherwise there is a fantastic offer on all Office (and Vista) boxed products just now with a choice of a free gift with any purchase.
I have been using Office 2007 for 6 months now and absolutely love the new features and ease of use.
http://www.microsoft.co.nz/rewards
meneame.net said,
May 10, 2007 @ 5:59 am
Probando Office 2007…
Una desarrolladora de KDE decidió probar una versión de prueba "completamente funcional" de Office 2007, que ni siquiera le dejaba crear o grabar archivos nuevos. Resultado: Descarga: 20 minutos Instalación: 30 minutos Uso: 2 minutos Desin…
sinewalker said,
May 16, 2007 @ 1:22 am
That’s an interesting comment from ammoir!
Shouldn’t the trial already be activated by default? Why would anyone want to hunt down a 25-character activation key for a 60 day free trial?
It’s also amusing that it takes Office 2007 half an hour to install, whereas I just installed an entire operating system (Kubuntu 7.04, upon canllaith’s recommendation!, which includes OpenOffice) in 20 minutes on my three year old PC!
No, I think I’ll wait until my employer joins the Microsoft migration flock with the other Microsoft sheep, and stick with OpenOffice for now (and consider KOffice once KDE is working on Windows)
sinewalker said,
May 16, 2007 @ 1:25 am
p.s. I hope you’re feeling better jes. And I hope to get a virtual machine running on my work’s laptop soon so I can help with KDE 4 documentation somehow. I haven’t forgotten, just been a busy new dad!
inactiva » Blog Archive » The Fully Functional Office 2007 Trial said,
May 17, 2007 @ 9:11 pm
[...] Much like jhall’s problems with the office 2007 trial, I downloaded the Office Standard edition 2007 Trial. Now, on the website it has this to say: [...]