Help Me Hate PowerPoint 2007 a LITTLE Less

Our school has upgraded all our computers to Office 2007. Okay, fine, I'm not a TOTAL Luddite.

Most of my time is spent on PowerPoint presentations for lectures. I absolutely HATE a couple of things. Can anyone help me figure out how to fix them?

1. In previous versions of PowerPoint, when a slide was filled with text, the placeholder at the bottom of the slide would pop up. One of the options was ALWAYS forcing a new slide, or forcing the text to split between slides.

In PPT 2007, when the slide is filled, the placeholder pops up. Sometimes it gives me the option of forcing a new slide, or splitting the text between two slides, and sometimes it doesn't. What gives???

2. In previous versions of PowerPoint, editing the colors of the different design templates was pretty straightforward. Well, I HATE the new templates, and the new color editing system is a nightmare--everything is interactive, and I can't figure out how to flip between the dark background and the light backgrounds, etc.

Why did they have to make it so freaking complicated???

PLEASE HELP ME HATE POWERPOINT 2007 A LITTLE LESS.