You have no doubt seen the Microsoft Office 2003 ads featuring dinosaur heads on people. They are a little creepy. In a way they are interesting however, and get an interesting point across. Many businesses are working in a bygone era. At least we do at my day job. Not that we do things particularly wrong, it's just that the technology has grown up so fast and we haven't adopted it yet. I think we should; we would do business so much better, and so much more efficiently.

I really don't know why we haven't. I guess it's hard to coordinate such a massive change to a new system. It may be more that people don't handle major change well, which is understandable. I still remember our move to Outlook a few years ago, and that was painful enough. I understand liking what is familiar to you, however if taking a little time to learn and use a new system could (if the system is designed well) help you get out of work earlier, or allow you to share the workload more evenly.

In the case of Office 2003, I think this is particularly true. Click here for a no-download Test Drive of Office 2003. It has so many features and new programs that make business just plain work better. I think the coming version of Office will continue this upward trend of working smarter.

I know we will forever squabble over whether XML or OpenDocument format is the best way to go, but from a business standpoint it really is about what works. The formats aren't so important. Businesses want results the easiest way possible.