Microsoft grabs more real estate
(October 6, 2007)


Like a lot of folks, one of my pastimes is hating Microsoft. For the past 8 or 10 years one of my favorite jokes (sorry, I've no idea to whom the attribution belongs) is the one about the 3 engineers stuck in a broken down car in the desert: Chemical engineer wonders about some contaminant in the fuel, the electrical engineer figures something is up with the wiring, and the Microsoft engineer ponders that even if it's 100 degrees outside, if they close all the windows and THEN restart everything will be just fine. It offers me a chuckle and makes for a slightly less frustrating experience when I'm required to restart my computer.

But to get to my point... Microsoft stole more of my screen real estate! I hate that! I want my screenestate back! A couple of months ago, I upgraded to Office 2007 and now, Bill and co have taken a bigger chunk of pixels with their prettier, Vista branded tool bars. Admittedly I have a fair number of pixels (1920x1200) and shouldn't complain too much. But really, how much bloody space do you need for the tool bars? Shouldn't the icons and navigation be more intuitive?

Add to this encroachment on my space, they've reorganized the tool bars and now I have to spend time relearning everything. Drives me batty when I'm forced into a new learning curve on such basic everyday software tools.

When it comes to rebranding and redesigning I believe that you should try pretty hard to keep the things that work. Not everything from previous versions is bad.

 

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