Advice on Excel question

[JAXE MAC]

Hi everyone,
I recently switched over to the wonderful world of Mac and have no plans of switching back. I bought a standard macbook and everything has been great so far.
I do have one difficulty coming up. Next quarter, I'm taking a statistics class that is requiring the use of Excel and it's statistical analysis add-on. So far in school, I've been able to get away with using neo-office or other shareware programs (as an aside, the robustness of shareware Mac applications has been a pleasant surprise) to avoid buying Office for Mac. I do have a copy of XP and Office XP for Windows but I've avoided loading bootcamp and XP or buying parallels and loading XP because I like the way OS X has handled everything.
I guess my options are:
1. Load bootcamp, XP, and Office on my macbook
(+) free to me
(-) major bloat on my system, PITA to switch to bootcamp for one program
2. Buy parallels, load XP and Office
(+) more convienent
(-) cost and bloat
3. Buy Office for Mac
(+) convenience, decent programs though use limited
(-) cost, was hoping instead to buy iWorks because Keynote kicks ass
4. Other???? Am I missing anything?

Thanks for your responses!!! :)

[akadmon]

Hi everyone,
I recently switched over to the wonderful world of Mac and have no plans of switching back. I bought a standard macbook and everything has been great so far.
I do have one difficulty coming up. Next quarter, I'm taking a statistics class that is requiring the use of Excel and it's statistical analysis add-on. So far in school, I've been able to get away with using neo-office or other shareware programs (as an aside, the robustness of shareware Mac applications has been a pleasant surprise) to avoid buying Office for Mac. I do have a copy of XP and Office XP for Windows but I've avoided loading bootcamp and XP or buying parallels and loading XP because I like the way OS X has handled everything.
I guess my options are:
1. Load bootcamp, XP, and Office on my macbook
(+) free to me
(-) major bloat on my system, PITA to switch to bootcamp for one program
2. Buy parallels, load XP and Office
(+) more convienent
(-) cost and bloat
3. Buy Office for Mac
(+) convenience, decent programs though use limited
(-) cost, was hoping instead to buy iWorks because Keynote kicks ass
4. Other???? Am I missing anything?

Thanks for your responses!!! :)

If all you want to do is run Office, I'd go with Parallels. Not sure what you mean by bloat. You can probably set up a basic Windows+Office VM for under 3GB.

I would definitely not go with Office for Mac today. Wait till Fall of next year -- that's when the new native version will come out (at least that's the word from MS). Hopefully it will have all the latest bells & whistles found in the current Windows version.

[ChickenSwartz]

CrossOver Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/)
This is your solution. It is free to try in the beta form for 60 days, then you will need to spend $39.95 to "pre-order" the final release.

I am using this solution as I too need Excel in ways that OpenOffice cannot help me with.

Office XP works well through CrossOver, I haven't had many problems. I also have Photoshop 7 working.

I am planning on buying Office:Mac next year (June/July) when the new, UB version is released.

[JAXE MAC]

You're right! That is my solution. Man, what did people do before internet forums?
Now I just need to time it out so that my free 60 day trial coincides with my 10 week quarter for school.

As far as bloat, I guess 3 GB doesn't seem like too much on a 60 GB hard drive, but just to use part of one program's application, it feels a little heavy.

Thanks for the speedy and completely enlightening responses!

[ChickenSwartz]

You're right! That is my solution. Man, what did people do before internet forums?
Now I just need to time it out so that my free 60 day trial coincides with my 10 week quarter for school.

As far as bloat, I guess 3 GB doesn't seem like too much on a 60 GB hard drive, but just to use part of one program's application, it feels a little heavy.

Thanks for the speedy and completely enlightening responses!

OK I am not saying you should do this but I am just putting the facts out there.

If you remove CrossOver and then reinstall it starts your 60 days over again. I found this because the first time I installed it and then tried to install Office XP it didn't work right. About a month later I decided to completely uninstall and reinstall as a last hope effort not to have to buy Office again. After the reinstall Office installed correctly and the 60 days started over.

[JAXE MAC]

I would never do such a thing. ;)







P.S.-
Thanks