Yes, my head hurts, and unfortunately it's not from a weekend of wild carousing. No, it's from a weekend of installing software. I'm sure you've experienced similar pain, and you might be a bit sympathetic.
Office 2010
As you know, the technical preview for Excel 2010 started last week, so I downloaded it, and was eager to take a peak at it. Even though it was going onto my old laptop, I wanted to create a virtual machine first, and install Excel 2010 in that, away from all the other software.
I'd never created a VM before, but how hard could it be? The first thing I did was find a site that gave step by step instructions on installing and setting up a VM. That went well, and the next task was to install an operating system in the VM. Of course, all I could find were some Vista disks, and I wanted to install XP Pro.
My MSDN subscription came to the rescue, where I downloaded XP Pro, and installed it on the VM, which took a loooong time! It went smoothly though, and eventually I was ready to load Office 2010.
That got off to a bad start, when it whined about a missing file, and wouldn't begin the Office 2010 installation. After a frustrating search, I finally found the missing file on the Microsoft site, and installed it.
Finally, with all the pieces in place, the 2010 installation was relatively quick, and trouble free. By then, the day was almost over, and my enthusiasm had waned considerably, so there wasn't much time to explore the new features. That will have to wait until next weekend, I guess.
Other Installations
During the slow periods, while things were being installed, I decided to load Expression Studio onto my desktop computer. That would give me a chance to work with it, and see if I like Expression Web better than my old version of Dreamweaver. It took quite a while to install too, with four programs, and multiple product keys.
To top things off, I also upgraded to Firefox 3.51, then had to find new versions of some add-ons that I like to use.
Anyway, that's all behind me now, and everything seems to be working well.
Some Quiet Work
Until my head recovers, I'd appreciate it if you use your inside voice, and work quietly at your desk. For your amusement, here's an Excel Functions word search puzzle. If anyone asks, just tell them you're working on some complex Excel functions.
To create it, I uploaded a list of Excel 2007 worksheet functions to the Armored Penguin site, and the puzzle was generated in a few seconds.
You can download the Excel file with the word search, and answer key sheet.
Thanks! We'll resume our regular stomping about on Wednesday.
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It's hard to be a technical of computers specially when you works arranging what others destroy. It's a difficult work and you need everyt be quiet. I'm sure about it.
Thanks Lonnor, you're right! It's much easier to concentrate when things are quiet.
Debra – Sorry to hear it was so painful. Any suggestions for those of us who want to do a technical preview, only have one computer, don't want to mess up Office2007Pro version but don't want to do the VM route?
Bob, the worst part was the length of time that it took to install everything -- I hadn't realized it would take so long. And now that you've read my sad story, you're mentally prepared for the installation. ;-)
I wouldn't try it on a production machine, where you're depending on Office 2007, without using a VM.
[...] we did an Excel Word Search on the Contextures blog a while ago, so use that one if you'd rather not create your own from [...]