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Fun New toys? Or hideous waste of time?

New DVD's in the mail last night from the Microsoft Partner Program - including two that I've left on the desk staring at me.

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007

Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Business

They're just sitting there, all shiny and tempting.

Left brain (logical, rational): Don't be an idiot. Your computer is working fine. You know how it works. You are productive.

Right brain (emotional): But they are so shiny and (whining) everyone else is using them. I read about Mike/Scott playing ith new toys all the time. me me me.

*sigh*

Help me out here, won't you?

None, One or Both?


Posted: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:04 PM by James

Comments

Colin Bowern said:

Do it! Someone needs to be the one to make the jump! :) I've been running Vista + Office on my dev workstation for a few months now as a normal user (not even elevating privileges to use VS2005!). It's been pretty stable (minus the occasional TortoiseSVN crash).
# January 31, 2007 9:30 AM

Kevin said:

Both. You don't want to be the last one stuck on WinXP and Office2003 do you?
# January 31, 2007 9:55 AM

Michael K. Campbell said:

Lol. Seriously - you nailed it. I've got Vista dual-booted right now. And I keep fighting (every DAY) the urge to just switch to it full-bore. Only I can't handle the productivity hit just now as I'm entirely too busy. But I'm still drawn like a moth to flame (or a mega-watt bug zapper) and can't leave it alone. Office, however, will impact you only for a few hours. The 'learning curve' will take you about a day, and then I'd suspect that you'll be MUCH more productive with it overall than you were before. Some things will still be a bit hard over the ensuing weeks - but the new office really has done an insane job of making the product better. I'd recommend upgrading ASAP.
# January 31, 2007 10:16 AM

Leo Nelson said:

Both!
# January 31, 2007 10:54 AM

Dan Hounshell said:

Okay, I'll play the voice of conservatism. I can't be like the rest and just stand there yelling "jump" while you're teetering on the edge. If your computer is working fine and you really have no reason to install Vista then don't do it. Especially if you're talking about your workstation and you can't afford to scrap everything and restart from scratch if something goes wrong. However, if a weekend comes along and you've got nothing better to do then create some backups and go to it! I would, however, not hesitate to upgrade to Office 2007. At worst it botches and you have to re-install Office 2003.
# January 31, 2007 12:33 PM

cometbill said:

Get HyperOS, duplicate your machine, and have nice, safe, reliable working machine there just in case, and then upgrade. If it doesn't work out for you you'll have your old machine to roll-back to. If the transistion is a little bumpy you'll have both 'machines' available to work on. If all goes well, you'll have another 'machine' to try installation testing and the such-like on it. I'm using HyperOS, I have one 'machine' running Win2000 with nothing installed except video drivers and my game of the month, and another installation of Windows 2000 with all my development stuff and internet apps. When I want to install something new, I backup my installation (takes less than 10 minutes), install it and try it, and restore the old backup (less than 10 minutes again) if something screws up.
# February 1, 2007 12:07 AM

Todd said:

If you do go with Vista, be ready for issues and be backed up (duh). I had strange things afoot for a couple of days while it was trying to play well with my video card, optical drives and such. Now my machine seems to be running smoothly for the most part. Haven't installed Office 2007 yet, so can't comment on that.
# February 1, 2007 5:45 AM

British Inside said:

When I asked if I should install Vista and/or Office 2007 , I really didn't know what to expect.

# February 2, 2007 6:59 AM
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