Office 2007 first impressions

I like to wait for the early adopters to report back on the first service pack before I deploy any major software releases myself. With that said, I'm just now getting my first taste of Office '07.

So far, I don't have much good or bad to say about it. I guess it is what it is - just the next version of Office. I don't mind the ribbon and I imagine it'll be just fine once I get used to it.

I do have one issue with it, which is more of a peeve than anything that truly affects productivity. The color schemes are absolutely useless. It's not that I feel left out because want a green scheme, an orange scheme, or a purple scheme (for the uninitiated, you're given the choice of blue, silver, or black). My issue is this: what good is configuring your OS appearance preferences if applications don't observe them? These "skinned" applications all seem like they were created by someone who just didn't have anything better to do. Unfortunately, almost all applications seem to be going that way. Norton has been doing it for years with their consumer stuff (luckily their corporate stuff still uses normal window appearances). Winamp has never used regular Windows forms. Roxio has recently started using the skinned appearance, and even AutoCAD now restricts users to either a "light" or a "dark" color scheme. To me, applications like this can just be distracting. I much prefer when apps have a consistent look and feel. Wasn't that one of the original selling points of Windows in the first place?