Part of what can make Windows 7–or any previous version of Windows–seem slow is the rate at which the cursor moves when you hold down a key. That’s why one of the first things you should do after a new installation of Windows 7 is to adjust the keyboard speed. Do that by opening the Start menu and typing “keyboard.” Click the Keyboard entry under the Control Panel section, and Windows 7 opens the Keyboard Properties dialog box. From there, make sure the Speed tab is selected, and move the Repeat Delay slider to “Short.” Click OK, and from that point forward, Windows will react much faster when you hold down a letter within any application.

Microsoft has no doubt heard plenty of complaints about the ribbon bar, especially since  the company provided no way for users to return to the menu interface of Office 2003 if they want to. So the company spent some time putting together a handy “interactive guide” to Word 2007 (and 2010) commands.

The guide is actually an virtual representation of the familiar Word 2003 interface, running inside of your browser. Just use the fake interface to select a command from the menus, and the guide will show you exactly how to find the same command in Word 2007–and, for the most part, Word 2010.

Another way you can pull up a quick reference to 2003 commands is by opening the Help menu (F1) in an Office 2007/2010 application and typing “2003 commands” in the search box.

You can tell Office 2007 and 2010 to save files in the old 2003 formats by default. To do so, open an Office application like Word, and click the Office/File button in the top left-hand corner. From the resulting menu, click the Word Options button.

In the Options panel, click Save in the left-hand pane, and then from the list of options in the right-hand pane, find the drop-down list box labeled “Save files in this format.” From the options available, choose “Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc), and then click OK. From that point on, your office application (in this case, Word) will save files in the older format.

Instead of doing this, however, it may be wiser for you to direct those still using the older doc format to download and install the Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2003. With that installed, the older applications will not balk at the newer formats.