Do I need worry about a performance hit if I upgrade to Office 2007?

Amazon’s got a sweet deal on the Office Professional upgrade right now -- $270, and you get $75 of that back in credit for future Amazon purchases. I’m considering making the jump, but I’ve heard some stories about slowness with Outlook 2007, though some were on early versions and I don’t know if the problems were resolved. If I can expect a performance hit with Outlook 2007, that would be enough to kill the deal for me. Anyone have any advice either pro or con? I’m running XP, 3 GHz-Pentium 4, plenty of RAM & hard disk space.

 

Is Outlook a must have?

Gerard

 

Sorry, but I disagree with just about everyone here on this. I've been using MS Office since Office XP, upgrading to Office 2003 and to Office 2007 (last year). Each newer edition gets more bloated and slower than the previous edition, so Office 2007 is the most bloated and imho, the slowest yet. Furthemore, I prefer the older menu-button bars to the new (2007) version.

 

Not really Gerard. If you just want to do email you don't need it but if you want to use the PIM features if it then its excellent. Thats the reason I haven't migrated to another email client or switched totally to another office suite although along with Office 2003 I also use Word Perfect and Open Office.

On the subject of Office 2007. I tried the trial. Hated it and it definately ran slower than Office 2003. I never tried Office XP. I never seen anything in it I liked or would use over Office 2000. When 2003 came out I got it mainly because of the much improved Outlook.

 

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Consensus: mixed. If I could ask a few follow-ups of those who said they have, or have not, noticed sluggish performance with Office 2007 (particularly Outlook), this might help me decide:

1. Are you running XP or Vista?
2. What’s your processor type/speed?
3. Did you upgrade from Office 2003 on the same PC?

Many thanks!
P.S. Eagle Creek, thanks for the suggestion of trying the demo, which I’d normally do, but this special offer expires after 2 Feb., which doesn’t allow enough time for a trial.

 

That´s the right question Reynald. I did use Office2007 on a P4 with 2GB RAM and XP-Pro - and I was not quite satisfied with them. Slow and clumsy. When I set up my Vista Ultimate 64 on this machine Office2007 is flying now.

 

If you have a student at home. You can get a student discount through many sites. Gradware has Office Professional 2007 for $169.99.

Code:

http://www.gradware.com/product/view/784349

 

2007 runs great no performance hit at all..

 

I doubt you will have a problem. But before you install it clean up your system, CCleaner and defrag will make a difference. Also shut down as many windows services as you can. Use Blackvipers web site at http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Also you can run Free for personal use, other users see http://www.pcdecrapifier.com.


YOU SHOULD BACKUP YOUR KEY USER FILES BEFORE DOING ANY OF THESE STEPS. EVEN BETTER TAKE A CLEAN IMAGE SO YOU CAN RESTORE IF NEEDED

 

I did suffer a small performance decrease, not hardware wise, but work productivity wise.

I am used to many of the keyboard shortcuts in Excel and Word, and the new 2007 seemed to have either changed the keyboard shortcuts or disabled a few of them. I now have to click the appropriate buttons to insert lines, cells, etc. It marginally slowed down each task I was doing slowing my entire work process by I'd say around 25%. Maybe this is because I am still new to ths software, so I am not familiar with where to find all the appropriate buttons are.

 

With your machine there should be no performance hit. Using a P4 2.4 512 ram and old 75gig IDE drive it is clear that 2003 is faster than 2007 but not slow enough to be an issue. On a machine that is not 5 years old there should be no measurable hit at all.

Is outlook a must have - YES . Initially I hated the changes - especially to the to do list -- now I wouldn't go back. The new file format is a pain for me as not supported within Paperport but until they catch up I find I can still use compatability mode.

Go for it.

 

@reynald,

If you are now using Office 2K3, I say 'stand pat'. I don't see any practical advantages to Office 2K7 (and I don't care for its GUI), so why pay anything to upgrade? If you don't already own 2K3, that's another matter.

Fwiw, on my laptop (PentM 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM) Outlook 2K7 definitely takes noticeably longer to open (on its first use after bootup) than did Outlook 2K3.