Time to switch office packages

One of the only reasons I stay with MS Office is because I think Excel is a darned good spreadsheet and other than my email and IM clients is probably the tool I use most in my job.

I just saw an article today entitled "Microsoft: Office 12 to anticipate needs". I can't tell you how many times a day I curse Microsoft Office for anticipating my needs ... incorrectly ... and making my life less efficient and more difficult. With every version it gets worse. Honestly, I almost want to go back to V2 of office before it was integrated, before it assumed Internet connectivity, before the advent of the paperclip, before, before, before.

If the design team is smart, they'll have a setting "I am smarter than my machine". If a user sets that to true, Office will for once be really smart and let me use my own brain instead of pretending it can think like I do. *sigh* But of course, they won't do that. For me, usability is only going to get more and more unwieldy as Office tries to add more "anticipate me" features to an already convoluted codebase. And I also have to wonder if they'll finally use an open document format. I believe it's finally time for me to switch. Open Office anyone?