office.beta.2.

recently, as a minor perk to working ive been given an office beta 2 cd...
not that its too much of an exclusive thing, since you can download them off the net (albeit the installation is a little over 1gig, so downloading is kind of for the diehard hardcore miscrosoft devotees)

voila.

no big changes here if you use 2003... if you use mac it probably looks alittle sillier and friendlier than this... (ive just realized how infantile windows xp looks... very toddler friendly, big colorful plasticine buttons.)
eventually it loads up, doesnt take too much longer than my current office, which wasnt 03 mind you... i was ancient office.
first change...
the little office circle which is the same as your windows vista circle is where file used to be (all those timesaving ctrl-s, alt-f shortcuts are nonexistant and cause windows to span little gremlins that crawl in your ear and whisper mac is for baby girls, now... quite a thing to see)... just thought id point that out, since everything changed with this new jetblack shiny office... oh and colibri is the new default font. it kicks times new roman's ass like those armies at Marathon (google this reference for shits and giggles)

other changes, the menu system... no more little icons and long long menus... now its a big icons, that update your document in realtime (which is pretty nifty, easy to picture if youve ever used corel) and everything grouped together in relation to what your doing...
and it all lights up in orange... and black is the better looking of the 2 schemes, the other being an airy baby blue number that i just could get behind... but onyx is techno savvy isnt it?

and what everyone is going to love, the only thing that makes people go whee and wow is this, smart art. instead of autoshapes you get smart art. im not complaining, it does look nice and you get hundreds of options, more if you count color changes and style alterations (emboss, extrude? for pansies, we got that and 3d rotations!)
i really do question the usability of 3d rotations, cause it shifts everything into perspectives and angles and everything looks so very cool and 22nd century, but it is a little difficult to read half the time (highschool kids will pepper reports with this thing though.)
and the sad thing is that while i think it looks great now, once everyone can do it, it wont be so cool anymore... itll be common, and common is a step away from boring.