It’s no doubt that the two most used office applications all over the world is the 2003 Office Professional and the Microsoft Office 2007. Although the later is considered to be a newer version, many still choose to stay with the 2003 Office Professional because of its features. Besides it is really hard to let go of something that you are used to.

The sad thing is eventually you really have to let go of the 2003 Office Professional. Like all the older Microsoft office versions, this version will one day reached the end of the line when Microsoft stops giving even extended support for it. But until then, using the 2003 Office Professional edition is still a good choice especially for those who have learned to love it.

Let’s take a close look and compare what these two Office applications offer in terms of their components:

The 2003 Office Professional has the following office applications:

• Word
• Excel
• Outlook
• PowerPoint
• Publisher
• Access
• Infopath- only available through volume licensing.

On the other hand the Microsoft Office 2007 has the following applications:

• Office Word 2007
• Office Excel 2007
• PowerPoint 2007
• Outlook 2007
• Business Contact Manager
• Office Publisher 2007
• Office Access 2007
• Office InfoPath 2007
• Office Groove 2007
• Office OneNote 2007
• Office Communicator 2007
• Integrated Enterprise Content Management
• Integrated Electronic Forms
• Advance Information Rights Management and Policy Capabilities

The Microsoft Office 2007 may have a lot of office application and may seem like its more advanced than the 2003 Office Professional but if you think about it, do you really need all of these applications or would you rather stick with the basics of and get just what you need. The 2003 Office Professional does not take as much memory and computer space than the 2007 Office and although basic, it almost have everything that you need for simple computer applications.

On the other hand, the Microsoft 2007 as compared to the 2003 Office Professional offers more flexibility and gives the user more chance to explore the many activities on a computer. For more advanced users, they will find the numerous applications as an answer to what they had been looking for since they don’t have to buy other third party programs and applications if it has a counterpart in the Microsoft Office 2007 version.

So depending on how you plan to use these applications the 2003 Office Professional offers a no frills applications. With the many programs that are with the Office 2007, there is a lot of things that you have to get used too. This is probably the biggest hindrance on why many Windows operating system computer owners choose the 2003 Office Professional over the Office 2007. Simple things are still better and definitely more manageable. But then again technology is all about changes, so adapting to the changes is also one factor that we should keep in mind.

The default word application of the Office 2003 is the 2003 Microsoft Office Word. It is in this version of Word that the word office was integrated as a way to emphasize the unity of all the Office suites. So what used to be as Microsoft Word now became rebranded as Microsoft Office Word. The 2003 Microsoft Office Word are included in the following editions of the Microsoft Office 2003:

• Basic Edition
• Student and Teacher Edition
• Standard Edition
• Small Business Edition
• Professional Edition
• Professional Enterprise Edition

Many are asking what’s so special with the 2003 Microsoft Office Word since not much were added to or enhanced from the previous version of Word which is the Word 2002 also known as the Word XP. Perhaps the biggest and most significant change or improvements on the 2003 Microsoft Office Word were the addition of the Research Pane and the enhancement on Reviewing and Comments.

What’s special about the 2003 Microsoft Office Word enhancement on the Reviewing and Comments is that it now displays both in-text comments and encapsulated comments. If you come across a 2003 Microsoft Office Word document that has balloons on it with comments, well that’s the enhancement for an encapsulated comment. You will also notice that the text is placed more conveniently in the margins. This is so you can preserve the layout of the document that allows for an easier tracking of changes.

These enhancements on the Reviewing and Comments of the 2003 Microsoft Office Word is very useful for editors and copywriters to point out some things that needs to be changed or worked on the document. This makes the writers more aware of their flaws as the revisions will be very obvious already as compared to editing the whole document. You can also save some space in the document since the comments are located in the margin already.

Another feature of the 2003 Microsoft Office Word is the addition of Research pane. It is a new function that gives the user the capability to simultaneously reference a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia through the World Wide Web without leaving Word. That way you don’t have to go from one window to another on your task bar. This makes the 2003 Microsoft Office Word more user friendly for students who does a lot of research work.

Lastly, the 2003 Microsoft Office Word is designed to work more efficiently with a Tablet PC. A Tablet Pc is designed to work like a portable writing tablet. Here you can include handwriting recognition. It also has the capability to remember handwritten words. What’s more is you can use a pen input device to write and draw straight on to the document page.

There may be less added to or enhancement from the previous version of Word on the 2003 Microsoft Office Word but the very few that was added on are indeed very useful. So in the end it’s not the number of things that were added or changed but it is the functionality of these changes that matters.