I've been using Microsoft Word since 1983 and have used every upgrade that has since come along. Each upgrade added something new, but the main program was always left in place. Thus it was not too difficult to adjust to the new features. However, Microsoft Office Word 2007 (as it is now officially called, rather than just Microsoft Word) is so radically different from previous versions that it brings a whole new meaning to the word "upgrade."

On one hand, Word 2007 has some wonderfully cool features that make typing a document faster and easier than ever. On the other hand, users who have become comfortable with the older ways of doing things could go crazy trying to figure out how to access their favorite commands and shortcuts.

As an example, an editing command that I use frequently is "Select All." Well, I could find no reference to this in the Word 2007 toolbar or menu headings, so after half an hour of looking I finally resorted to my old standby "Ctrl+A."

Later, however, I spotted an "Editing" tab with "Select" as one of the options. This brought up three more options, "Select All," "Select Object," and "Select Text with Similar Formatting." Nonetheless, Ctrl+A was still the quickest way to do Select All.

By the way, all the popular "Ctrl+" keyboard shortcuts from earlier versions seem to be intact: Ctrl+S=Save, Ctrl+Z=Undo, Ctrl+X=Cut, Ctrl+C=Copy, Ctrl+P=Print, Ctrl+V=Paste, Ctrl+N=New, Ctrl+O=Open, Ctrl+2=Double Line Spacing, Ctrl+B=Bold, etc.

In any case, Word 2007 does have one new feature I really like:

Mouse-select a word or phrase and a near-invisible Format Option Box appears just above the selection. If you ignore it and continue with what you were doing, it goes away. However, if you move your cursor over it, the box and its options become clearly visible.

The options include choosing a different font and/or text size, along with the usual Bold and Italic style choices. (Oddly, the Underscore choice is not included.) However, Bullet and Numbering options are included and very easy to use.

Another cool feature is a "scaling bar" in the lower right corner of your Word window, whereupon minus or plus (- or +) clicks will decrease or increase the "screen view" of your page in ten-percent increments. (Bear in mind that "screen view" changes will not affect the print-out of a page — changing the actual font size is required for that.)

Another useful "screen view" option is Draft Layout (in addition to the familiar Print Layout, Full Screen Layout, Web Layout, and Outline Layout.) Choosing Draft causes your document to be in "plain text" with a minimum of formatting options other than paragraph breaks. I recommend this view for anyone doing simple, straightforward typing of text that might later be, say, copied into an email or into an HTML layout. Draft is ideal for typing my newspaper columns, since the editors prefer plain text anyway.

Little buttons for these layout options are to the left of the scaling bar. (The Draft Layout button is shown in orange in the above illustration.)

If you plan on buying Microsoft Office 2007 (which, of course, includes Word 2007) be prepared to shell out some big bucks. I see prices that run the gamut of about $150 for the "Home and Student" version up to about $679 for the "Ultimate" version.

Word 2007 as a stand-alone product is listed at $229, with $110 being the price of an upgrade version.

Those of us who are expected to keep up with what most of the world is using in word processing have to have Word 2007 whether we like it or not — or whether we need such a huge, top-heavy product or not.

However, most home or small business users could get along just fine without all this super-sophisticated comptometry and would probably feel more comfortable with a simple word processor such as AbiWord or Google Docs, both of which are totally free. (Click their names to visit their download sites.)

If you need a full office suite (a word processor, a spreadsheet utility, a presentation program, and some basic drawing tools) OpenOffice gives you all of this for free. The suite can be downloaded from www.OpenOffice.org.

In any case, you can download a free trial version of Microsoft Office 2007 (Home & Student Version) here: Office 2007 Free Trial, and get a free trial version of Microsoft Office 2007 Professional here. It can't hurt to try out either or both of them. The free trial period on each is 30 days.