Tool Comparison: Word 7 vs. Word 97

[KIBBUTZ HANNATON <hannaton -at- ACTCOM -dot- CO -dot- IL>]

Here is the summary of responses I received about keeping
Word 7 vs. upgrading to Word 97. Hope it is helpful.

Debbie Pesach
Kibbutz Hannaton
Hannaton -at- actcom -dot- co -dot- il

First, consensus that the latest version of Word should
be called Word 97. There is less consensus about whether
the previous version of Word should be called Word 7 or
Word 95. Personally, I'm going with Word 7 since that is
what Microsoft calls it. Granted this makes for a bit of
confusion when referring to Word 7 vs. Word 97.

Since only a few people answered me, and I got both "upgrade"
and "don't dare upgrade now," I guess that there is no
real consensus. The following are summaries of the responses
(I'll assume that even though I said I would post a summary,
it isn't proper to quote sources without express permission.
If I offend anyone, please accept my apologies;-)).

1. Thanks to Keith Soltys for referring me to the article
about upgrading on his web site. Sorry that I haven't gotten
there yet Keith, but I will.
http://www.interlog.com/~ksoltys/coredump/UpgradeToWord97.html

2. CON: There are concerns about the extreme bugginess of Word
97. Problems with formatting and editing graphics were cited
by several respondents.

3. PRO:
"Visual Basic replaces Word Basic as the embedded programming
language existing inside Word."

 "Word 97 has some neat features that Word 95 doesn't, and if
you act now, you don't have to jump twice when the next Office
suite comes out!"

"While there's always backwards compatibility, there's never
forward compatibility, meaning you can't open a Word 97 file
in Word 95.

"Word 97's been around long enough that whatever bugs MS was
going to work out, it has, and everyone knows about the rest of
them, so they can warn you.  Do it now, before we're all racking
our poor brains over the next version."

"Word 97 handles large documents MUCH better than previous
versions, even the dreaded Master Document. It's not as good
as FrameMaker for large docs, but a tremendous improvement."

"File sizes are much more manageable, especially with embedded
graphics. One change, though, is that if you like to edit the
graphic after it is embedded, it will lose resolution. With
Word 95 and before, I could copy and past graphics back and
forth between Word Draw or PaintShop Pro and tweak to my heart's
content. Not anymore... But this is very minor compared to the
file size savings advantage."