Rindis.com

I typically don’t talk about work, here or elsewhere. One, it just isn’t a big part of my mental space, and two, it’s a very good way to stay out of trouble.

However, this needs pointing up:
http://www.notebookshopper.com/
(And click on the ‘blogs for students’ link…. ^_^)

It’s an effort to get around just how big and institutionalized things can get, and experiment with new ideas on a lighter, flexible website.

On another note at work, they’ve been busily upgrading everyone to Office 2007 around here.

General first reaction? Yuck.

To be fair, if I had gotten used to the new UI first, I think I’d be fine with it. There are some very nice things to go along with some not-so-bright choices.

Basically, they’ve gotten rid of both the top menus and the little customizable button bars, and replaced them with a ‘ribbon’. It’s a nice bit of UI overall, basically being a graphical version of the old menus, and does a good job of clearly presenting a lot of options that were buried before. One fun fact: When you hit ‘Alt’ on a Windows machine, it wants to go into the menus and is expecting shortcut inputs from there. On this version, not only is this true, but the actual letter shortcuts appear on the ribbon, so that you can actually figure out how to use it.

But it is new, and different, and a lot of things are not immediately obvious. Also, the old buttons were fully customizable, and the ribbon is set in stone. All you can define is an extra row of quick buttons along the top.

Also, there is a new default font for all portions of Office, Calibri. It’s designed to display well on LCD monitors. I kind of like it, but… 1) I have a CRT at work. 2) I do not care for the idea of a sanserif font being the default for Word.

So, ‘shows work, needs thought’ so far. I feel no need to upgrade from Office 2000 at home.