Well, I'm no computer geek. Just a computer user who more often than not, knows just enough to get himself into trouble. Then I moved to Washington . . . 8 miles away from Microsoft. Go figure that we would buy a house next door to a Microsoft employee! I used to use Firefox for my web browsing, but I promised to at least try the new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) when it was avaialable.

That was five months ago. Aaaaaaannnnd you know what? Still using it. They've incorporated my favorite thing about Firefox - tabbed browsing, developed a cleaner user interface, and incorporated RSS feed subscriptions. It's very different than the old version, and it does take a little getting used to. It's also terribly unhip to admit that you use (and like) MS-anything . . . but hey, I'll live with it.

Based on my good experience with IE7, I decided to go ahead and jump on a chance to check out the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta (a.k.a. Office 12). Wow, big changes there. Again, totally different user interface, but clean, easy to use, and helpful. I've been using it for about a month now. Outlook's changes are terrific, Excel's a bit easier to use, and Word is too. Haven't used PowerPoint or Access yet. My only complaint is that apparently, this stuff is just piggy when it comes to memory, so the applications are annoyingly slow. It'll be interesting to watch how people respond to this stuff, given that it's so different.

Other software news . . . I was able to buy Macromedia's Studio 8 package for $99 the other day. That's well over $850 retail. It's all legal, too. Nice. Now I just gotta figure out how it all works!