So you finally have Vista. What can you do now? Like most of us, you’ll probably need a ‘productivity suite’, those applications for the common day to day tasks you need to accomplish. Though there are plenty of free or cheap alternatives, most of us end up running Microsoft Office, largely because that’s what you use at work, or what is most compatible with all the data you’ve generated thus far. You wouldn’t know it by the media coverage, but Vista wasn’t the only new release today, Microsoft also released Office 2007.

Like Vista, Office 2007 has many flavors to target as many price-points as possible. There are actually 8 different versions, and if you count upgrade vs full release, there are 12 different licenses you could have, but not all are available for purchase (Basic is OEM only, Professional Plus and Enterprise are only available through volume licensing). If your curious about pricing, scroll to the bottom of this page, the main nine versions are shown there with pricing through Amazon that ranges from $139.99 to $599.99.

Here is a small grid (compressed version of the one at office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101635841033.aspx) that shows which applications are included in each version:

Here’s a brief description of each application:

Word

Most everyone is familiar with this word processing program. Among the new tools are the ability to create blog entries, professional style sheets, auto-generation of citations and bibliographies, a tool to clean the metadata that Word adds to files, ‘building blocks’ (much like AutoText), and a preset gallery of cover pages.

Excel

Another favorite, Excel is a ‘must have’ (I used it to make the grid image above). Among additions to the new version are an expansion of the worksheet to 1,048,576 rows, and 16,384 columns, improved conditional formatting, multithreaded formula calculations, and an improved charting engine.

PowerPoint

Almost synonymous with the word ‘presentation’, PowerPoints new features include rendering of 3D graphics, better integration with Excel tables, a slide library for often used slides, and added support for widescreen monitors.

Outlook

A savior to some, a curse to others, the new version no longer supports Exchange 5.5, indexes content to speed up searches, supports ’search folders’, also available in Vista, includes an RSS reader, can support work on multiple calendars simultaneously, and moves HTML rendering off to the Word rendering engine.

Outlook with Business Contact Manager

Provides tools for managing business contacts, including phone calls, e-mails, appointments, notes, billable time, etc. Can create reports and share data with Excel.

Accounting Express

Also available for free, Accounting Express is a Small Business tool that helps create quotes and invoices, track expenses, manage employee time and deal with payroll and taxes. It also has links to eBay, PayPal, Equifax and Office Live to make online sales easier.

Publisher

The desktop publishing program now includes the ability to autofill fields in templates, store frequently used content for quick access, easy conversion from one document type to another, improved save to PDF capability, and and improved Design Checker to find design inconsistencies.

Access

The popular database program includes support for document and image data types, new preset schemata, improved referential integrity checks, and updated Lookup Fields capability.

InfoPath

InfoPath allows you to create and deploy electronic forms to gather information efficiently. The forms can be available in web browsers, e-mail messages or mobile devices when using SharePoint Server 2007.

Groove

Groove is group collaboration software that is designed to help teams and organizations create a workspace that supports file-sharing, discussions, meetings, business forms, and more.

OneNote

A ‘digital notebook’ for gathering notes and information. Notebooks can be shared, and can include text, documents, pictures, digital handwriting, audio and even video. Can also sync with a mobile device.

Communicator

Billed as a ‘unified communications client’, Communicator (which won’t be available until the second quarter of 2007) can use IM, voice and video to connect different locations and time zones.

Integrated Enterprise Content Management

As the name suggests, a content management system that tries to organize the vast array of data that organizations can accumulate. It provided collaboration capabilities like automated workflow to help with the create/review/approve process as well as helping to protect sensitive documents and provide audit trails for all data. Documents can also be integrated with web sites for easier ’single deployment and management’ of information in an organization.

Integrated Electronic Forms

Googling around I haven’t been able to find any details on this. Presumably this is different than InfoPath, possibly just a collection of templates.

Advanced Information Rights Management and Policy Capabilities

If used with Windows Rights Managment Services users can define who can open, modify, print and forward information in the document. Organizations can also embed policy statements for specific e-mail statements.