First off no, this dose not include a simulated environment (That I`ve been able to find anyway). You must have office 2007 on your computer to actually compose and manipulate the documents in the student CD (orange cd). The Student videos (purple cd x2) are basically instructional videos that you can use you're self or set up to have many people look at them. These videos can correspond with the book work if desired for visual learning.
My local community collage required me to get this book for my introduction to computers class for my mechanical engineering degree. At present I can use most of office 2007 on vista well enough to make my documents look the way I want it to. The problem is professionalism and time spent doing it, I would not fell confident at all if I where to be employed where detailed knowledge of office 2007 is needed. This book helps a lot with that. In school we have our own simulated environment for the class room, but this book and content is almost a mirror image of the course work in terms of "this is what you need to do, this is how to do it, now go do it". I laterally only need to read it like a book to figure out how to do certain things in the various programs in office 2007. I have often used the book just like a step buy step manual for the online work for school. If I want to do specific things I need only to look at the table of contents, find the program section then find what I want to do. It's pretty much like a causal manual to office 2007, tells you want you want to know but doesn't shove it in your' face with a bunch of extra crap you don't need to know. I would say it's idiot proof but you do need to be familiar with how to navigate and search a computer. Honestly now a days I think anyone that can right click can find their way to the correct content for the book work. The included CD's give you sample documents that directly correspond to the book and the book shows you step by step with clear short instructions how to manipulate and create certain looks and effects with those documents.
This is in my opinion, vary clear and organized learning media for office 2007. If you have the need to learn office 2007, want to increase it's usefulness to you or simple want to get use to ~correct~ or ~professional ~ usage of office 2007, this product is defiantly worth looking into.