Many thanks to Wired Magazine for my geekness. Until recently, technology was a thing in my peripheral. I watched tech geeks in the same way I would watch cheerleaders at the highschool pep rallies, rolling my eyes and wishing I had skipped school that day. Although, with tech geeks it was more like rolling my eyes and being thankful I wasn't the one spending $3000 on a computer or trading out my PDA every year. Now it's: More gigs to the iphone? Rock on! (not that I even have an iphone...yet)

Now, however, things have changed as things do and I find myself saving paychecks and skipping lunches to buy these cool toys that are out. Luckily, many of them can be used in some way for my writing and since I make money off of writing it looks like they are attractively tax deductible. If that's not a reason to buy a new toy, I don't know what is.
But there are also a lot of non-geeky things out there for writers that are nearly as fun and cool and less expensive which I'll also post about as we go.

I'm going to start posting reviews, books and tools for writers on this blog since I couldn't seem to keep up with my geek blog. That blog is now deleted and gone for good! (or at least for now).

Microsoft Office 2007

If you do not have Microsoft Office 2007 you need to head to your nearest Circuit City and get a copy. Recently they had a sale on Office 2007 and you could get it for $99.99...normal price is around $150.
Maybe you're used to the drop down menus and such, maybe you like everything hidden from sight, maybe you're just used to this way of life and don't know any better.
I am pretty proficient at Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier and had become accustomed to how to use it, where to find things, etc. but with 2007 everything is right in front of you. Office 2007 is by far one of the most intuitive programs I have ever used. I am a very visual person and the first day I opened it I immediately found all kinds of things I had never known about in previous versions because everything was in drop down menus and I only went to those if I knew what I wanted but the visual interface of the 2007 version lets me see things I never even knew I wanted to use. It's actually buttons now, big beautiful buttons that so effectively illustrate what to do with each one that it takes every bit of guess work out and I can accomplish things much more quickly and efficiently and the visual quality of my work is much better.
And all of this goes for all the programs in the suite. The usability of this program gets 5 stars from me and a "hell yeah!"

This is a beautiful tool. For writers, you really couldn't ask for a better suite of programs for your writing. Well, actually there aren't exactly a lot of other options out there.

I am dragging my feet on Windows Vista however, I don't think it can impress me as an operating system as Office has impressed me in it's own category. There aren't many options out there that are comparable to this type of software so there's not much choice, but if you are still using 2003 or earlier, please, for the love of Steve Ballmer, upgrade to 2007! (otherwise you may incite his wrath and good god, you don't want to do that!)

By the way...this post was in no way influenced by Microsoft themselves, Steve Ballmer or others. If I had it my way I'd be using Google Office 2007 but 1) there's no such thing and 2) let's not go there today, I'm not in the mood to get on my soapbox about Microsoft and the shenanigans of late. We'll save that for another post.