First looks:
My Microsoft Office XP Professional package arrived today. The actual box is sealed inside a plastic container, so first, I had to cut the plastic container out. I found this a little odd because increased packaging is equal to more waste, and why would Microsoft do this? I was rather happy with all their other products - just the box, and a seal. This was going a little far.

Inside the box:
My package contained a few items. First of all, a nice looking book entitled "Discovering Microsoft Office XP Standard and Professional." This book is adapted from the larger book "Microsoft Office XP Inside Out." This "mini" book, which is still a good 200 pages, contains sections on Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Sharepoint Team Services, a section on how to use Office XP if you're disabled, and a welcome section that introduces you to Office XP.

Of course, you can't have a boxed product without ads. A few little sheets of paper advertising Microsoft bCentral, headphones by Plantronics, an Office XP Resource Guide (which is a mini catalog of addon items), and an offer for a subscription to "OfficePro" magazine. I did notice that all these items are NOT included in every package.

And finally, the CDs themselves. Office XP Professional is a 2 CD set (with the holographic faces - which makes it difficult to read which CD is which). There were a couple extra CDs in my package (again, some packages have more, some may only have these two). One was an AutoDemo for Microsoft Visio 2002, and the other was a "Step by Step Interactive Training" for Microsoft Office XP. Other packages include a 30-day trial of Microsoft Visio 2002 (mine did not include this).

Installation:
The first installation was an upgrade of my current version of Microsoft Office 2000 running on my Windows 2000 Advanced Server.

It was hard for me to say goodbye to Office 2000. But, it is now time to move on - embrace the new technological advances in the world, and upgrade old software. I encountered no installation issues, everything went as planned. I chose not to add on the new Office XP voice recognition feature. Everything else went flawless. I would, however, like to comment on Office XP Professional. This is the best you can get (as Microsoft did not make a "Premium" version which comes with FrontPage 2002 and Publisher 2002, and I felt this was a mistake, as I still have the 2000 versions on this system).
There is one item to note: Adobe Acrobat PDF Maker. If you have this (and possibly other addons that have expired certificates) you may encounter problems after an upgrade. You can repair this problem by visiting the Microsoft support site, and searching for the error message you receive.

I repeated the installation of Office XP on a Windows 98 Second Edition computer which also had a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 installed on it. Again, no issues to report.

Microsoft Word (pictured above) 2002 is the program that the majority of people will use the most. Many new features (other than the look) are part of this new product. I was particularly pleased with the new "Task Panes."

Task pane from Microsoft Word 2002.

The "Task Panes" make it much easier and faster to accomplish certain tasks that (in prior version of Microsoft Office) required navigating through menus which could eat a lot of time if one had forgotten which menu the task was located in. The task pane can be changed to different "views."

A few other additions to Microsoft Office XP include the ability to hold 24 (instead of 12) items in the clipboard. Speech recognition capability is also included in this new version of Microsoft Office (it also explains the reason for the Plantronics Headset ad in the box). For those that feel handwriting is best for them, Microsoft Office XP now includes an option to input handwriting (and either leave it as is, or convert it to text).

Microsoft has also made improved their document recovery capabilities. In the past, if any of the Office applications locked up or crashed while you were working on a document, in most likelihood, the document was gone. But now, the Office applications have the ability to save the document when the crash occurs, and if restarting an Office application, a task pane is presented with the last document worked on.

The menus of Microsoft Office XP are greatly improved, with a new look, and better learning (so it hides the commands you use least often).

Every new Office XP application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook) include advanced functionality which greatly improve the user experience. There has been great concern over the "Windows Product Activation" feature which required the owner to activate Office XP (and the upcoming Microsoft Windows XP) to use it. Many feel it is an invasion of privacy, however, the data transmitted to Microsoft includes no personal information at all. The data just includes encrypted information about the type of hardware (not specific hardware, just general: it has a CD-Rom, it has between 64MB and 128MB of memory, etc...). This feature helps combat piracy, which resulted in massive losses in revenue and taxes, and which was the cause of many lost jobs due to the decreased revenue. I wholly support the Windows Product Activation feature. If you have ever created a program, you know how much hard work goes into it. And a suite such as Office XP takes many man hours to create, and it should be protected. I do not, however, agree with the high prices of applications. Yes, research and design do take their toll, but applications do not need to be expensive (which is one of the main contributions to piracy, accidental or otherwise).

Overall:
The new Microsoft Office XP Suite (and its individual applications) can greatly increase productivity through the enhanced and the new features. Microsoft Office XP will be an easy transition for Office 97 and Office 2000 users (those using Office 95 and prior should upgrade straight to Office XP, the learning curve will be less than learning Office 97 or Office 2000). Comparing similar actions in Microsoft Office 2000, and Microsoft Office XP, I found most tasks were completed in less time using Office XP. Microsoft Office XP suite also featured the online update capability (just as Microsoft Windows 98 and higher do), so you can be sure Office XP is always up to date.

FINAL RATING: EXCELLENT!!! 10 / 10

Related links:
Microsoft Office XP feature comparison (Web)
Microsoft Office XP vs Office 2000 study (Web)
Microsoft Word 2002 expired certificate fix (Web)

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