Mother Nature Shows Her Capabilities Again!!!

Earlier 26th December was the boxing day for us. If you are a Sri Lankan and a cricket fan, then its with your memories for sometimes. But from 2004 onwards things got changed due to the Asian Killer Tsunami. It destroyed almost everything and taken hundreds of thousands of lives with it. After two years from the biggest natural disasters of the new millennium Mother Nature has sent another signal to show her strengths. This time it’s not another killer tsunami wave but an earthquake which disrupts most of the data and internet connectivity for the same region.

Telecom, PCCW Say Internet Disrupted by Quakes

By Andrea Tan

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. Southeast Asia's largest telephone company, and Hong Kong's PCCW Ltd. said Internet service in Asia slowed down after three earthquakes hit southern yesterday.

``The Taiwan earthquake has affected several submarine cable systems in Asia, causing cable cuts near Taiwan late last night,'' Singapore Telecom spokesman Chia Boon Chong said by telephone today. ``Some customers might experience a slowdown in data or Internet access. Traffic diversion and restoration works are currently in progress.''

was jolted by three earthquakes yesterday, killing two people and injuring 42 others, the island's National Fire Agency said. The tremors damaged undersea cables, causing a disruption to Internet traffic and some telephone calls in the region for customers including Singapore Telecom, PCCW, Chunghwa Telecom Co., 's biggest telephone operator, and KDDI Corp., 's second-largest telephone carrier.

PCCW, 's largest phone company, said data capacity on its networks was reduced to 50 percent due to the quake.

``Data service to , , and the were affected,'' said Hans Leung, a spokesman in .

Two of Chunghwa Telecom's cables were damaged by the earthquake, resulting in ``near zero'' capacity for voice calls to Southeast Asia, apart from Vietnam, said Leng Tai-feng, the company's vice president of international business.

``The repairs could take two to three weeks,'' Leng said. ``We're doing our best to coordinate with other operators in the region to resolve the problem.''

The first earthquake, which was magnitude 6.7, occurred at 8:26 p.m. local time yesterday off 's south coast, the island's Central Weather Bureau said on its Web site. The second, magnitude 6.4, happened at 8:34 p.m. and the third, magnitude 5.2, occurred at 8:40 p.m. All three were centered in the same area, the bureau said.

On Dec. 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra unleashed waves that destroyed coastal villages on the Indian Ocean from to , killing more than 220,000 people. Some of the areas have yet to recover.

KDDI said its fiber-optic undersea cable in was damaged, affecting fixed-line services to . The company is re-routing phone calls to go through the and and may take several weeks to two months to repair cables that are damaged, KDDI's Tokyo-based spokesman Haruhiko Maede said.

KT Corp., 's largest provider of fixed-line phone and Internet access service, said the outages affected overseas connections of the foreign ministry and Reuters, which use leased lines, said Kim Cheol Kee, a spokesman for Seongnam-based KT.

KT is in discussions with foreign phone companies to redirect traffic elsewhere, Kim says.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Tan in at atan17@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 26, 2006 22:57 EST

Lessons to Learn

Warren Buffett - Finfacts Businessperson of the Year 2006
By Michael Hennigan, Editor and Founder of Finfacts
Dec 3, 2006, 14:43

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett answering questions from business students at the University of Nebraska

Legendary American investor Warren Buffett (b. 1930) is to business what Nelson Mandela has been to politics - they stand apart because they are individuals who have gone against the grain in significant ways.

"Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates," Nelson Mandela said on acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and last June, Warren Buffett announced that he would begin transferring the bulk of his fortune of about $40 billion, to the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation. He has said that it's almost un-American to pass great wealth to your children.

An Irish businessman recently commented that the real thrill of success is to drive to a friend's house in the expensive new car following a business killing and just watch for the momentary expression of envy.

Warren Buffett, the world's second richest person, has shown that success does not have to be defined by conspicuous consumption.

In a rare interview CNBC anchor Liz Claman takes an inside look into his surprisingly simple life in "Warren Buffett: The Billionaire Next Door," a one-hour special that first aired last month.

The result is an hour-long fascinating look at the man and an opportunity for viewers to learn firsthand from the world's most famous investor.

Buffet takes Claman on a personal tour of his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska from his grandfather's store where he turned his first profit selling chewing gum and soda, to the $31,500 house he's owned for almost a half-century. The unassuming billionaire says, "I like the way I was living when I was in my 20's. I still like that way…I like to go home and put on a sweat suit."

Buffett owned his first stock at the age of 11, but admits, "I don't know why I wasted time before that stock…I got started late."

In the hour-long special, Claman gets Buffett to open up on a variety of topics such as his gut instincts about business, his feelings about Wall Street, how he feels when he makes a deal, his surprising view about his own tax rate and his $31 billion pledge to the only person in the world with more money, his good friend Bill Gates.

Buffett says on the issue of honesty and ethics that it's easy for him to talk about it but if there were two sick kids in the house without food, he's not sure if he would consider holding up a store.

So how does the second richest man on the planet measure success? "Well," Buffett says, "I would say success is really doing what you love and doing it well…It's simple as that."

Buffett also offers insight into his famed company, Berkshire Hathaway, and what may happen when "The Oracle of Omaha," as Buffett is commonly referred, decides to step down.

We at Finfacts have often reported on the wide gulf between super earners and the rest of workers, in the US.

It's an issue that is a concern for Warren Buffett.

Buffett has opposed repeal of the estate inheritance tax saying that it "would be a terrible mistake," the equivalent of "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics."

"We would regard that as absolute folly in terms of athletic competition," he said.

"We have come closer to a true meritocracy than anywhere else around the world," he said. "You have mobility so people with talents can be put to the best use. Without the estate tax, you in effect will have an aristocracy of wealth, which means you pass down the ability to command the resources of the nation based on heredity rather than merit."

New York Times columnist Ben Stein wrote last month that he had met Buffett who compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

It turned out that Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though Stein says that he agreed with him, he warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Berkshire’s Corporate Performance vs the Standard & Poor's 500 1965/2005

Extract from the Interview – The Lesson

1) He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!

2) He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.

3) He still lives in the same small 3 bedroom house in mid-town Omaha, that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.

4) He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security people around him.

5) He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world’s largest private jet company.

6) His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.

7) He has given his CEO’s only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose any of your share holder’s money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.

8) He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His past time after he gets home is to make himself some pop corn and watch television.

9) Bill Gates, the world’s richest man met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffet.

10) Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his desk.

11) His advice to young people: Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself.

They should learn the basics of marketing and customer attraction…

During the last couple of weeks we faced enormous difficulties when dealing with local service providers. During their marketing campaigns (especially on TV commercials and paper advertisements) they do boast about their end services. But reality is far away from the advertisements.

I’ll give few examples for your reference.

1. One mobile phone company is using a slogan of “Future Today”. But in real world they can not provide their customers the on time service due to ancient technologies in placed. Followings are among the few excuses they are giving to their customers.

• Our server got crashed therefore can not process this request now. We’ll try this on tomorrow.
• We do have a long queue on our server; we do not have a mechanism to prioritize the jobs on queue. It’ll take a day or two to process the job.
• We do not trust our customers therefore we do deactivate services when their outstanding exceed the deposit.
• He is having an abnormal talent and he is a genius. It enough for him to touch a device to heal the issue. (:D this is what mentioned by one of their customer care executives)

2. One communication provider says that they do have backups in heaven. In real they take years to give their customers a new connection. Their rates are among the one of the highest in the region. Its essential bribe them in-order to get a service else we have to force from the top.

This is a common practice in this island I guess. No matter what the company type is (privately held or a government institute) they do inherit these. The real joke is managers at a one communication company want their customers to call them and remind about the mails send weeks ago. Else they won’t notice about the client’s requests sometimes they might not using it.

I have a one advice for you all, in Sri Lanka do not use the e-mail addresses displayed in web sites (web sites published by the Sri Lankan companies, especially SLT, Dialog). You won’t get a reply from the other end for years.

Is it Future Today???

TM not the Trade Mark but the Telekom Malaysia’s local presence, Dialog Telekom’s says that they are bringing the future to SL. I doubt whether they do so. Seems it’s another lie. Like some of the foreign investors, they used to pump billions of rupees from here to Malaysia.

Do I hate Dialog? Yes of course. I do have thousands of reasons for that.

1. Their business practice in SL
2. Their customer services
3. The way they treat their customers,

are just three key reasons for me to hate them. They advertise saying that they have 3 million customer base. I doubt whether it’s true. This might be another mind game like what LTTE used to practice. Else they might be counting all the number issued from their inception (with the inactive accounts).

Forget that. I do have couple of bad news regarding Dialog’s corrupted business practice over here in SL.

First, their customer service is the worst one in this island nation. They do not have much trust over their customers. They suck the money from their customer’s like vampires but do not trust the customers (even they do maintained clean records for couple of years). During a recent phone conversation with one of their customer service head, we got to know this news. He expressed their (Dialog’s) attitudes towards customers by telling that as a company they do not trust the customers. Then what the hell they are doing here? Just trying to suck money from the local market and going to invest them in their country.

Second thing, they do sell used mobile devices. They do purchase used items from other countries and sell them over here. This is a good revenue source for them. They do sell special devices such as Blackberry devices in this way. Recently we bought a Blackberry device (7100 g), very old device introduced by RIM. We found lots of scratches on the housing.

Third, they do not provide what customers want. They want us to buy what they offer. Communication plays a bigger role in day-to-day activities in these days. People prefer true mobility in-order to reduce workload, to increase productivity and efficiency in their busy life. For that they need customized telecom solutions matches to their expectations. But Dialog doesn’t accept that. They want us to travel backward through time. Our company wants Dialog to provide us a Blackberry data plan which supports us to connect our BES instead of their one. But Dialog refused to do that since they are going to loose their monopoly.

Fourth, they have already put the national security in to wrong hands. You’ll get lot more details about Dialog’s unethical business practices through this forum.

The Sooner You Start, the Later You Finish

http://www.focusedperformance.com/articles/multi02.html

To do two things at once is to do neither. - Publius Syrus

The source of this page is a posting made by Frank Patrick to one of a variety of online discussion forums, most likely an e-mail discussion list. It's tone and style may be informal, occasionally provocative, and sometimes, even impertinent. There may even be typos until an opportunity arises to clean them up for more formal presentation. Despite these minor shortcomings of style, the content is worth sharing.

William wrote...

"But there are all kinds of risks and costs of starting things as early as possible." Not true. There is no cost to starting early. The risk is with NOT starting early. Good practice has ALWAYS been to schedule all activities to start as early as possible -- that's why it's the default in most scheduling software!

Allow me to suggest some risk/costs of starting early, in increasing order of concern.

• A negative hit on cash flow from spending before one has to.
• Dilution of focus on the part of the project manager and team from what must be done to what is being worked on because we can. (Possible confusion on project progress if too much weight is given to work completed unnecessarily.) Since most projects consist of parallel paths of work, any work done sooner than necessary will just have to wait for merging paths anyhow. Kind of like undesirable work-in-process inventory in production.
• The possibility of doing work that isn't a predecessor to, but can be influenced by learning’s in parallel paths of the project, leading to potential wasted effort and possible rework.
• For multi-project environments, where several projects are pursued with a shared set of resources, earlier starts than necessary will tend to drive multi-tasking without good reason, adding otherwise unnecessary effort, time, and waste to all projects involved.

The first three are real enough, but I'd like to focus on the fourth as the most compelling reason. Many project environments are multi-project environments, dependent on shared resources that a variety of projects are calling for. There is often all kinds of pressure not only to start tasks early, as William suggests, but also to get whole projects started as soon as funding is available. One common way to manage resources in this kind of environment is to use the idea of the fractional headcount -- half time on one project and half time on another, and unfortunately, often another half time on a third project. In every Critical Chain workshop I've given, this mode of operation has been readily recognized by the participants. It allows the organization to get projects started, and after all, the sooner you get started, the sooner you finish. Right?

Wrong.

If you start projects early, and utilize the common practice of multitasking to do so without pulling resources completely off of other projects, then all the individual projects suffer from extension of lead time AND the entire organization suffers from a loss of "project throughput."

The reason for this should be quite intuitive. If you interrupt work on one project prior to handing it off to work on another project, one project sits idle while work is performed on the other. This results in longer lead times for all the individual projects involved.

The second benefit, additional throughput, comes from the combination of avoiding multitasking and the staggering of projects by their use of a heavily loaded common resource.

Tough to draw it with text, but if there are three similar projects:

a1a1a1b1b1b1b1b1c1c1

a2a2a2b2b2b2b2b2c2c2

a3a3a3b3b3b3b3b3c3c3

widespread multitasking would result in:

a1    a1    a1b1    b1    b1    b1c1    c1

  a2    a2    a2b2    b2    b2    b2c2    c2

    a3    a3    a3b3    b3    b3    b3c3   c3

completing 3 projects in the time shown -----|

(Not counting time lost to "context switching.")

Focused effort and "constraint" scheduling (staggering the projects based on the use of the "b" resource in this case) would result in:

a1a1a1b1b1b1b1c1c1

        a2a2a2b2b2b2b2c2c2

                a3a3a3b3b3b3b3c3c3

                        a4a4a4b4b4b4b4c4c4

                                a5a5a5b5b5b5b5c5c5

Starting projects 2 and 3 LATER results in them are finishing SOONER. Also, there are almost five projects COMPLETED in the time needed for three projects with the same level of resources over that timeframe. Plus the organization would see the benefit of the original three projects in an average of less than half the time required in the multitasking mode.

I know these are simplistic examples, but I believe appropriate for this limited text-based medium, and hopefully sufficient to make the case for the desire to avoid multitasking and early starting of projects.

But back to the issue of starting project tasks early...

Sometimes a set of project schedules will result in resource contention across projects. Even if resources are leveled up front to try to avoid multitasking, "stuff happens" and tasks shift in time, resulting in unplanned contention. If a schedule is designed with tasks happening as early as possible, as suggested by the software's default, these resource contentions are sometimes unnecessary for the success of the individual project, take management attention and effort to try to resolve, and worst of all, have the potential of impacting not only the current projects but the throughput and timing of other projects as well.

I'm not suggesting that non-critical activities start as late as possible, just that they don't start as early as possible. The critical chain approach suggests they start "early enough" to avoid impacting the ability of the critical tasks to proceed, and that "early enough" is defined by the feeding buffers.

Keep in mind that "early as possible" may sometimes not be "early enough." The slack that results from "early as possible" starts in critical path schedules is simply a mathematical outcome of the network of tasks and may very well not be sufficient to protect the ability of the critical tasks to make progress. (That's what happens when non-critical things become critical and why critical paths change through the life of the project.) The buffers, on the other hand, are designed/sized to provide that necessary protection.

Office 2007 Will Rock Corporations' Worlds

By Anne Chen and Michael Caton

Review: eWEEK Labs' tests show that the new suite is one of the biggest innovations from Microsoft in years and is well worth evaluating for an upgrade. With big changes, though, come big training and deployment issues.

Office 2007 is one of the most ambitious and innovative releases to come from Microsoft in years, introducing big changes and improvements to a productivity suite that is a mainstay in corporate environments.

Released to manufacturing on Nov. 6, Office 2007 will be available through volume licensing to enterprise customers at the end of November and should hit store shelves early next year.

eWEEK Labs has been testing the beta and pre-RTM versions of Office 2007 for some time now, and we believe that the new productivity suite is a compelling upgrade for corporations using earlier versions.

The new interface makes it easier for users to find the commands they're looking for. The interface includes a ribbon, comprising a combination of tool bars that changes depending on the task a user is working on, and the Office Button, which replaces the old File menu.

Other tools fill some gaps and pump up Office graphics. The Document Inspector tool, for example, allows users to check their documents and strip them of metadata and revisions before sending the documents on, and a plug-in finally brings PDF capabilities to Office. Meanwhile, Smart Art allows users to create charts that visually pop, particularly in PowerPoint and Excel.

There is suitewide focus on collaboration in Office 2007—especially, of course, in Outlook, Groove and OneNote. From these applications, users can share information and documents with greater ease than ever before.

For all the advances Microsoft has made with Office, however, the company still has a tough sell ahead of it. Office 2007's toughest competition will be the previous versions of the suite running—usually quite well—at corporations.

In addition, low-cost and free Office alternatives are maturing and becoming more viable. In fact, eWEEK Labs recommends that users who do not require the bells and whistles offered in Office 2007—and who are looking mainly to edit and view simple documents—check out options such as OpenOffice.org's namesake suite and ThinkFree's ThinkFree Online. Both suites run on several operating systems (which Office 2007 doesn't) and are free (which Office 2007 most certainly isn't).

And it's not just the price of the suite itself that makes Office 2007 expensive: IT managers looking to deploy the new suite will also need to consider the costs of the training and deployment issues that are bound to arise with such a significantly changed product.

Indeed, while all the new features and functionality will likely improve productivity in the long run, in the short term, IT managers should expect user confusion and frustration. For example, although we eventually found the interface ribbon to be intuitive and grew comfortable working with it, we did get frustrated trying to locate common tasks when we first began working in Office 2007. Enterprises will need to factor in training time—and likely an initial productivity hit—as users become accustomed to the new user interface.

The UI isn't the only big change in Office 2007. The suite also introduces a new default XML-based file format called Open XML for Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Rather than the .doc, .ppt and .xls extensions of previous Office versions, users will see .docx, .pptx and .xlsx, respectively, in Office 2007. To alleviate confusion over the new file formats, IT managers can initially change the default settings so that files continue to be saved in the Office 97/2003 binary file formats.

To its credit, Microsoft has released a compatibility pack to solve potential file-format compatibility issues. If a user of Office 2003 receives a file created in the new file formats, he or she will be asked via a pop-up to download and install the free compatibility pack. With the pack—a 27.1MB download—users of Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP or Office 2003 will be able to open and edit files in the new Office XML file formats.

We installed the compatibility pack on a computer running Office 2003 and found that everything worked when we tried to open and edit a .docx file. However, IT managers should still expect some user confusion over the new file formats.

Several versions of Office 2007 will be available, including Office 2007 Enterprise and Office 2007 Professional Plus, both of which will be available through volume licensing only. Available through retail outlets are Office Ultimate 2007 (priced at $679, or $539 for an upgrade), Office Professional 2007 (which costs $499, or $329 for an upgrade), Office Small Business Edition ($449, or $279 to upgrade), Office Standard ($399, or $239 to upgrade), and Office Home and Student (priced at $149, with no upgrade option).

During tests, we installed Office 2007 Enterprise (comprising Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Access, Groove, Communicator, OneNote, InfoPath and Publisher) on a Toshiba Tecra A8. We also installed the suite on a Micron desktop with Pentium 4 processors and an Nvidia GeForce FX5920 Ultra video card running the RTM code of Windows Vista.

Office 2007 requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Server 2003 with SP1. The suite also can be installed on systems running Windows Vista Beta 2 or later, but not earlier prerelease versions of Vista.

Users' visual experiences with Office 2007 will depend on the operating system they are running. Office 2007 running on Windows XP SP2 will have a default blue theme, while the productivity suite running on Vista will automatically default to Vista's black, or Obsidian, theme. A silver theme is also available with Office 2007.

With the proximity of the Office 2007 and Vista operating system releases, it comes as no surprise that Office 2007 takes advantage of Vista's Aero Glass capabilities. Users will see a remarkable difference, particularly in the ribbon, when running Office on Vista. Whether the glass is a distraction that hampers productivity, though, will depend on the individual user.

Word 2007

With Word 2007, users will find increased control over their data, whether they're trying to encrypt documents or checking a document to ensure that revisions and comments are inaccessible before sending it to someone.

Word 2007's Document Inspector allows users to inspect a document for comments, revisions and versions; document properties and personal information, such as hidden metadata; hidden text; and headers, footers and watermarks.

Under the Office Button, the handy Prepare menu allowed us to get documents ready for distribution by restricting who could and could not edit, copy and print the documents. We also were able to add a digital signature, view and edit the document properties, and make the document read-only. To securely redact information, however, we had to turn to Adobe Systems' Acrobat 8 to make sure we could black out sentences in our document and ensure the text underneath could not be seen.

While the first thing users will notice in Word 2007 is the new UI, they will also notice the introduction of a new default font called Calibri, which replaces Times New Roman. Users also will notice the handy word counter at the bottom of the screen, and bloggers will likely appreciate a tool that allows them to compose a blog post in Word and then post directly from Word to a blog. Word 2007 supports direct posting for multiple blog providers, including Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, TypePad and WordPress.

When opening a .doc file created in Word 2003 or earlier without converting it to a .docx file, Word 2007 operates in Compatibility Mode, which makes it impossible to use features that are not found in earlier versions of Word to ensure compatibility between the versions.

To gain more work space for our Word documents, we were able to minimize the ribbon whenever we didn't need it. We could quickly restore the ribbon by clicking on a tab related to what we wanted to do.

While we eventually became accustomed to the new ribbon interface, some parts of Word still puzzled us. For example, the longer our documents, the worse the disappearing text problem. Whenever Word did an automatic justification, the text display wasn't in sync with where the characters actually were in the file. As a result, if we were to go back to insert a word in a sentence, that word might wind up in the middle of another word. We've had this experience with Word 2003 as well, but the issue seems to be a bigger problem in Word 2007.

Another thing we hoped to see in Word, and in Excel, was some sort of online component that would allow us to access our documents without having to e-mail them to ourselves or deploy SharePoint Server. Unfortunately, such a capability still does not exist.

PowerPoint 2007

PowerPoint 2007's Smart Art graphics feature (also available in Excel and Word) allows users to add slick charts and graphics to presentations.

PowerPoint 2007 introduces themes, which are templates that contain design information. Users can create their own themes and reuse them, or they can choose from a set of themes already available in PowerPoint and on Microsoft Office Online (office.microsoft.com).

Along with themes, PowerPoint 2007 adds the ability to design and save custom slide layouts. Users can reuse these layouts, avoiding having to cut and paste layouts onto new slides. We found the custom slide feature really made a difference when it came to creating presentations quickly.

When PowerPoint is used in combination with Office SharePoint Server 2007, users gain collaboration capabilities, including the ability to share and reuse slide content that is stored on a centrally located Slide Library in SharePoint Server. This also allows users to repurpose existing content or to easily add slides that are required in every presentation by their company.

With SharePoint Server, users can also manage, initiate and track review and approval processes within PowerPoint 2007.

While the first betas of Office 2007 included support for PDF, a squabble between Adobe and Microsoft caused support to be pulled from the shipping version of the suite. However, that feature can be added to Office 2007 in the form of a downloadable add-in called Microsoft Save as PDF. Microsoft is also making an add-in for XPS (XML Paper Specification) available for download. (Both downloads are available at office.microsoft.com.)

In tests, it was quick and easy to download and install the two add-ins, both of which are smaller than 1MB. We created PowerPoint presentations and saved them in a variety of file formats, including PDF and XPS. We were able to do the same with Word and Excel documents as well. While office suites such as OpenOffice.org and Corel's WordPerfect have allowed users to save files as PDFs for years now, this is the first time this capability has been found in Office. In future versions of Office, we hope to see PowerPoint support Adobe Flash, a feature available in Sun Microsystems' StarOffice productivity suite.

Excel 2007

The benefits of the ribbon interface are most obvious in Excel 2007, making it much easier for users to fully leverage the advanced features of the spreadsheet program.

Excel 2007 also introduces vastly improved graphics capabilities, including fancy three-dimensional charts and graphs that are now easier to create.

Using the new charting engine, we easily built everything from a pie chart to a scatter chart. Other chart options include stock, doughnut and bubble charts. All the charts we built using Excel 2007 were visibly more impressive than ones we've made in the past with Excel 2000 and 2003.

We also appreciated that Microsoft has made it easier to use more advanced features. With PivotTables, for example, users can now drag fields to wherever they want them to be displayed. Best of all, Excel now supports even larger data sets, with spreadsheets of up to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns.

Outlook 2007

For Microsoft's Outlook users, Outlook 2007 makes some considerable changes even beyond the new ribbon interface. As was the case with Outlook 2003 and Exchange Server 2003, some of Outlook 2007's more significant improvements tie in to Exchange Server 2007. Despite that connection, Outlook includes a number of new capabilities that will allow users connected to previous versions of Exchange or other e-mail servers to operate more efficiently.

Outlook 2007 has two major UI changes: the addition of the ribbon interface on Outlook form components, such as New Message and New Calendar, as well as the new To-Do bar in the main Outlook interface. Outlook 2007 also has a number of smaller, more refined improvements that make it easier to view and organize information.

We found that the ribbon element in Outlook 2007 delivers the same kind of easy, contextual access to features that it does with other Office applications.
The To-Do bar is an optional interface element that gives users a quick view of the calendar, tasks and flagged messages along the right edge of the main interface. The bar includes the month calendar view from the left navigation element in Outlook 2007.

We liked that the To-Do bar imports tasks from other Office 2007 applications, including Project 2007, OneNote 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services. As a substitute for the Mailbox view in previous versions of Outlook, it does a good job of keeping users in tune to outstanding work and can be an ever-present reminder system. The feature will likely appeal most to users with widescreen displays because its presence consumes a good deal of screen real estate.

Microsoft has made a number of improvements to meeting management, particularly when it comes to scheduling meetings. The biggest improvement, the Scheduling Assistant, requires running Exchange Server 2007 on the back end. The Scheduling Assistant makes it easier for meeting organizers to schedule meetings by identifying the best available times on participants' calendars.

One of the nicer calendar features of this release—the ability to share a calendar availability view—doesn't require Exchange Server. With this feature, Outlook 2007 users can e-mail a message that shows availability for a period of time directly in the e-mail message. The message also includes an iCal attachment with the same information. When testing this feature, we could limit the amount of information shared in the message to just free and busy data.

Also boosting general meeting management capabilities in this release of Outlook is integration with OneNote 2007. Users who rely on OneNote to organize meeting agendas and minutes will be pleased to find that the OneNote integration passes Outlook 2007 meeting information to a OneNote note.

On the e-mail management side, Outlook 2007 has a couple of features that tie in directly with Exchange Server 2007, including the ability to schedule and manage out-of-office messages and tie in Exchange Server 2007's managed folder capability. Managed folders give companies a way to organize e-mail messages based on compliance requirements.

Outlook 2007 also has a few additions that will make it easier to manage information. We liked the new message flagging and categorization methodology, which allowed us to categorize messages by color without flagging them.

Overall, we found Outlook 2007's performance a little slower than Office 2003's when performing routine tasks, such as sorting messages or opening the calendar. Search is faster, however, albeit not blindingly so.

Access 2007

With the 2007 suite, Microsoft has substantially improved the Access database user experience. A suite of prebuilt tracking applications serve as templates, making it considerably easier for users who have little to no previous database experience to track information and create reports.

We liked the new automatic table creation feature, which did a good job of correctly identifying data types. We did manage to trip it up, however, with unexpected data when importing from Excel.

Access 2007 now has InfoPath forms integration, which pretty much only allows users to reuse a form someone else has written. That might be the point, but we had a hard time envisioning a case where it would make sense for a corporation to rely on InfoPath as a front end.