And it's disappointing that dialog boxes and the occasional task bar have barely changed from the 2003 equivalents, even though you'll use them far less and they're far easier to find.

Outlook only has the new interface for individual messages and calendar items, not the overall application. Look at your Inbox or Contacts folder and you'll see the same old clutter of menus and toolbars; open a contact or write an email and you get the ribbon organisation of Word.

Diehard text fans will miss the option not to use Word as their email editor, but it no longer slows things down, and spell checking as you go is as useful in email as it is in any other document.

One place the new interface doesn't work as well is with add-ons; these are more popular for Outlook than the other Office programs and they're usually toolbars and context menus. Outlook 2007 relegates them to an add-in tab on the ribbon, (unless they're specifically written to work with the ribbon) so they can be harder to work with. Add-in management is also moved from the Options menu.

Big difference

There are small changes in Outlook that make a big difference, like being able to set the timezone for a meeting - and yes, you can have the start of a flight in one timezone and arrival time in another. Searching is vastly improved; on a par with the free LookOut add-in but integrated into the program very neatly.

Let the indexer run overnight when you first install Outlook and you can retrieve email by typing a few letters into the search box at the top of the window, or from the Start menu in Vista.

Outlook organises more than your mail. The colour scheme of Office can feel relentlessly cheerful but the bright colours work well for colourcoded categories, which replace the unmemorable coloured flags of 2003 and update the seldom-used category feature.

The flags are now reminders: right-click and you can remind yourself to deal with a message. You can still choose a specific hour and minute but we prefer the today, tomorrow, this week and next week options that mirror the way people think about work.

The new look of Office takes up more room than just having a menu bar, although not more than having a few toolbars up. If you sacrifice a little space in your Inbox for the To-Do Bar you'll see your next few appointments - including things you've been invited to and haven't yet seen in your email - and the tasks you've flagged.

This is the time and task management most PIMs promise, delivered effectively and simply; where Microsoft gets it right, that's the real advantage of 2007 Office.

Annoyingly, you can't sort the tasks so that 'Today' is at the top - either 'This Week' or tasks that aren't tagged with a specific date get in the way. Word doesn't only use the ribbon to make sense of existing tools; galleries organise new effects, from document building blocks to themes to SmartArt.

Building blocks include pre-built objects like pull quotes and your own selections, so you can save your address and signature and drop them into a document rather than starting from a fixed template. Themes combine font, layout and colour styles so you can quickly get the same look and feel in different documents.

Paragraph styles are simplified, although there's still room for improvements. SmartArt doesn't only power the range of diagrams the ribbon button offers, you also get a range of effects on shapes and charts including reflections and translucency that look like you've had a graphic designer helping you out.

Excel gets the same art effects for charts and graphics; PowerPoint gets those same powerful charts and can even use SmartArt for bullet points.