Office XP vs Office 2003
Microsoft Office has become an integral version with each and every Microsoft OS. It has therefore become a tradition that every OS release is coincided with a new release of Microsoft Office. When Windows XP was released, Office XP was also made available to the public via OEM and as standalone products. Office 2003 was a later release that only featured some minor improvements to the core applications of Office XP. The improvements included a better junk mail filter in Outlook, a reading layout for Word, some statistical functions to Excel,and a backup command for Access. The ones mentioned above are not the only improvements made as mentioning each one would probably take a long time.
Office 2003 also added support for pen and tablet devices that provided another input method other than the usual. Smart tags were also significantly improved, with additional XML formatting via the use an extended type library. Office Online, which is an online feature that allowed users to download content like clips and other things, was also introduced with Office 2003. Most of the cliparts that usually came with Office releases has now been removed from the installation disc and has been moved to their internet servers. So if you do plan to get cliparts and templates, internet access has become necessary.
Another change in the Office 2003 package is the removal of the Microsoft Photo Editor which has come with each office release since Office 97. This program was replaced with the Microsoft Office Picture Manager in 2003. This new program introduces better editing features that minimizes the loss of quality in editing pictures. Although, supposedly improved, some users felt that the new program lacked some of the more useful features of the program it replaced. The picture manager is also unable to handle GIF animations and this has caused some browsers to not show GIFs.
The improvements in Office 2003 are not really that significant and for most people, the cost of buying another Office release is too much when you already have Office XP fulfilling your needs adequately. The money could be better spent in later releases like Office 2007.
Summary:
1.There were only minor improvements in office 2003 with regards to its core applications
2.Office 2003 introduced pen and tablet support
3.The smart tags feature of Office XP was improved in 2003
4.Office Online was introduced with 2003 and not with XP
5.The Microsoft Photo Editor in Office XP was replaced by the Microsoft Office Picture Manager in Office 2003