I have been reading about how Word 2007 makes it easy to create professional looking documents. I am intrigued because I am sitting here using Word 2002 on my laptop, and I even still use Word 97 on my old NEC mini laptop, which I appreciate because I can carry the NEC anywhere and use Word, then beam Word documents to my laptop later. I’m thinking I should upgrade after seeing how handy this new Word 2007 looks. Here are some of the features the new Word has to offer:

The layout of Word 2007 offers an intuitive interface that brings many hidden features to the surface. Instead of the familiar file, edit, view, insert, etc. drop down menus, Word 2007 provides a new tool called the Ribbon which puts document creation tools at your fingertips. In older versions of Word many features such as headings and styles were harder to access. In this Word 2007 screenshot you can see the improved tab-based interface. In the screenshot you can see the “write” tab offers font, paragraph, headings and styles options within easy reach. The Galleries section of the Ribbon (which looks like small squares or windows containing relevant document formatting tools) allows the user to select tools that they want so they can create documents faster.

When you have created your document you can press the Office button at the top left and choose to save, print, or publish the document (in addition to other options); with the publish selection offering an option to create a blog post from the current document.

I have tried almost every word processing program out there, and often use Google Docs and Open Office. However with all the new features in Word 2007, I may have to try this newest iteration from Microsoft.

I’d love to hear from experienced Word 2007 users out there who can give me more reasons on why I should upgrade to Word 2007. Is it really as intuitive as it appears? Do you like using it? Which word processing program do you prefer? Talk about your experiences in the comments section below.