I am a Microsoft office xp user. Years ago I used WordPerfect. In my Unix geek days, I just used vi – those who are fellow geeks will understand. But the question is, why do I use it. I am a Microsoft office XP user because the rest of the world is. It has become the standard for office productivity.

That said, I also like Microsoft Office XP. I have found that the productivity tools have found a new level of stability on the XP platform. I remember the days, when Microsoft Word would suddenly crash with an unhandled exception error and all my work was gone. That no longer happens. In the rare event, that I have a problem and the program dies, on the XP platform, it restarts itself and somewhat miraculously restores my work to the place I was working at.

I have used all the Microsoft Office XP suite of tools. Like many people, I have used Word the most, followed by Excel for managing my spreadsheets. PowerPoint is the standard for presentation software. Microsoft Outlook is great for email. Publisher lets me design really cool looking documents and brochures. Front Page lets me easily and visually create simple web pages.

There are times when you really wish that the Microsoft Office XP product would do something that the programmers never thought of. You need an extra function or a quicker way of doing a repetitive task. Don’t worry, many independent companies have written plug in products for Microsoft Office XP. Need to add notes to your emails to help remember what’s in them. Don’t worry – there is an Outlook plug-in to do just that. Need to be able to read a pdf document in Word – there is a plug-in to do that too!

If you are a newbie to Microsoft Office XP, don’t worry. Office offers plenty of help within the program. It even has a configurable “assistant” to help you through tasks. If the program help is not enough, you can go online and find answers to almost any question about Microsoft Office XP. There are companies that offer video tutorials for the beginning user and websites with the how-tos of writing custom plug-ins for the techie user.

Some people think Microsoft Office is too pricey for home users. However, today, Office is bundled with many new computer systems and comes preinstalled for you. If you don’t have Microsoft Office XP, and you are a student, you are in luck. Microsoft offers great educational discounts on its software. You can buy the educational versions in the stores on the net. Most places just want to see your student ID.