Does Office come with a Mac?

Yep, you could buy Office for Mac new, or you could buy an older, used copy on eBay, or you could switch to a suite of non-MS software-- there's tons of apps out there that serve these purposes, some free. Appleworks is kind of like a less-pro verison of Office, it can do presentations (i've never tried this), spreadsheets, text, painting, drawing. Up to you, really, just make sure you get Office for the Mac (whether you're using OS 9 or OS X, make sure it's the one you want).

pnw

1. No Microsoft does not allow preloading of M$ Office on Macs for one reason... They wouldn't be able to sell it to us for $300+ US.

2. There are plenty of free Office-esque Suites, most are better than M$ Office anyway.

3. iMac, iBook, and eMac all come with Appleworks. It is a lot like Microsoft Works, except everthing from office in included (Except a calender and Address book, but we have them elsewhere), and it is all with in one 50MB Program, not a 200MB Suite.

TEG

same here...

I've been looking into this as well. My wife has relied on Microsoft Word for the past few years with doing reports for school. Then she would save these to disk and print them at the school printer lab.

Soooo... yea... I've looked into just getting Word for our new Mac. It's like $129. Yuck. I'm sure I'll look at other word processing apps before I shell out that kind of money though.

One thing you need to know, Powerpoint on a Mac doesn't have all the same options as it does on a PC (personal experience here, not sure if this is the same case with Excel and Word.)

But this basically has to do with the animation options in presenting. I've had to do viewgraph engineering from time to time and I can't do the same things the PC guys do (but my graphics look better )

And Powerpoint on a Mac can view flash and flash animations, which is pretty damn slick if you put in some interactivity in them. This is a great way to get around many of the issues, but unfortunately, you can't view Flash .swf files on the PC version.

Good luck,

D

Whatever you do, don't pay retail. In the immortal words of C.Kramer, "Retail is for suckers."

If you know someone who's a student or works for the government, then get them to buy it for you. You'll get a huge discount.

Re: office

Originally posted by pdham
This may seem like a stupid question, but I am switiching over to a mac for the first time. Does office come with all macs, or is it a software you have to buy. I ask because I fond a pbook from J&R computers that I am looking to order and want to know if it comes with office (word, powerpoint, etc)

Thanks,
Paul

Click to expand...

Apple and M$ have a new copromotion that allows you to buy Office X for $199.00 when you purchase a new mac. Makes it a bit easier to swallow than the $500.00 regular price:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/officex/prodinfo/OfficeRomance.asp

Its apparently good until April 7th.

As much as I loathe M$, I have to admit that the Mac Business Unit did a pretty good job with the X version of Office. A far different beast than Office v4.2 that I started off with in 1995 with my first Mac( 30 floppy disks...yeek)

I have a question about the non-MS apps (free or not) available for OS X.

Do they natively support MS file formats (mainly interested in .doc and .xls as I don't do many/any presentations)?

You said you wife was a student. If so, most schools have a site license for office. Meaning that all students get it for free (media fee = 10bucks). Might want to look into that if you are still in school or work at one, etc.

Someone please give the guy a straight answer!

There is a current promo from MS and Apple to sell MS Office for around $200:

http://www.apple.com/promo/office/

Check the source where you are buying your Mac to see if you can get the promo when you purchase the Mac.

My understanding is that you have to buy the two at the same time (pretty much how you would configure a PC to come with Office).

Retail is friggin expensive! what, $500 or something?

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by Pablo
I have a question about the non-MS apps (free or not) available for OS X.

Do they natively support MS file formats (mainly interested in .doc and .xls as I don't do many/any presentations)?

Click to expand...

While every now and again there are formatting issues, AppleWorks will translate back and forth with .doc files. That's why I use it--and it was free w/my iBook. Seriously though, I've ALWAYS used AW.

Regards,
Gus

Re: same here...

Originally posted by sethwerkheiser

Soooo... yea... I've looked into just getting Word for our new Mac. It's like $129. Yuck.

Click to expand...

I think that's the upgrade price (like going from Word 98 for Mac to Word X for Mac). To buy Word X for the first time its over $300 I believe. Triple Yuck.

Thanks for the information Gus.

What about a PIM? I'm used to Outlook...does OS X come with something similar, or how does Microsoft's PIM for OS X compare?

Originally posted by Pablo
Thanks for the information Gus.

What about a PIM? I'm used to Outlook...does OS X come with something similar, or how does Microsoft's PIM for OS X compare?

Click to expand...

OSX 10.2 comes with iChat. Though at the moment from what I've heard there are better instant messengers available.

MacBandit,

I'm actually looking for a Personal Information Manager (PIM):

Mail
Calendar
Contacts
etc.

I'm just curious as to what OS X has built-in, or what other apps are available and recommended.

Thanks.

Originally posted by Pablo
MacBandit,

I'm actually looking for a Personal Information Manager (PIM):

Mail
Calendar
Contacts
etc.

I'm just curious as to what OS X has built-in, or what other apps are available and recommended.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Sorry you can see where I would get confused though. Personal Instant Messanger.

Anyway, Yes there are all those services built into OSX just not in one program. Apple has separated them into separate programs that way any program on the system can be written to use the Address book and calendar and such. It's really a cool idea. Instead of having one program that does it all. All the programs have access to the information if they are written to do so.

Palm Desktop you can download, install and use, works very well without a PDA. It's a much better organizer than Outlook.

Thanks for the information.

$219 for Office

Not sure if anyone linked to this:

Office for $220

For students and such...

OpenOffice

It strikes me that no-one has mentioned the very good OpenOffice available for free from OpenOffice.org[url]! Ok, it's not *quite* as powerful as Office:mac, BUT it has no price tag, and opens/edits all MS office files! There are a few issues with installing it on OSX but when you do, it flies! The download is great too - only 100mb's (ish).

If you're a heavy powerpoint user then dammit, Keynote. Work of genius if you ask me - and the price tag is very reasonable.

As far as an email client goes, the email client in Mozilla is pretty darn good for a freeby. As for a calender/organiser? iCal! It's great!

There are ALWAYS alternatives to MS Apps available for little or nothing, especially when it comes to Macs.

I'm still waiting for a decent Msn Messenger client for OS X - the MS one is crap, to be frank. Is it true that iChat 3 has .NET capabilities?