What's the difference between all the Mac offices?

[WillMak]

After trying out appleworks for several days I decided it was pure crap. I loaded up the 30 day promo of office mac that came with my new ibook and fell in love immiediatly. My only quesiton so far is: What's the difference between student edition, standard amnd professioanl? I'm poor so I want to get the student but would hate for it to be a piece of crap.

I also tried to download apples's 50 dollar rebate pdf but it's currently an "error" file on their site. Can someone here tell me what I need to do to get the 50 dollar rebate?

 

[CanadaRAM]

After trying out appleworks for several days I decided it was pure crap. I loaded up the 30 day promo of office mac that came with my new ibook and fell in love immiediatly. My only quesiton so far is: What's the difference between student edition, standard amnd professioanl? I'm poor so I want to get the student but would hate for it to be a piece of crap.

The Office 2004 (retail) and Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition have the same programs (just the same as the Trial version on your drive). The Office Pro 2004 adds VirtualPC.

The differences between the Retail and the Student and Teacher Edition are:

• You have to be a student, a teacher, or the parent of a student living in your house in order to qualify for the S&T edition.
• You get three licenses, for three machines at the same household with the S&T Ed (does not apply to children who are living away at school)
• You cannot resell or transfer the S&T edition, even if you no longer use it.
• The S&T Edition doesn't qualify for any reduced cost upgrades - if you want Office 2007 or whatever, you will have to pay full price.

 

[WillMak]

The Office 2004 (retail) and Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition have the same programs (just the same as the Trial version on your drive). The Office Pro 2004 adds VirtualPC.

The differences between the Retail and the Student and Teacher Edition are:

• You have to be a student, a teacher, or the parent of a student living in your house in order to qualify for the S&T edition.
• You get three licenses, for three machines at the same household with the S&T Ed (does not apply to children who are living away at school)
• You cannot resell or transfer the S&T edition, even if you no longer use it.
• The S&T Edition doesn't qualify for any reduced cost upgrades - if you want Office 2007 or whatever, you will have to pay full price.

3 liceneses? So I don't get infinite installs!?!?!? BOOOO!!!!! Time to go the illegal route then!

 

[gekko513]

3 liceneses? So I don't get infinite installs!?!?!? BOOOO!!!!! Time to go the illegal route then!

May I ask which software license you do buy that give you infinite installs? It's not very common, I would say.

An even though we're dealing with Microsoft here ... it's not ok to break the law and use someone elses property without paying just because you disagree with some aspect of the offer they give you.

 

[CanadaRAM]

3 liceneses? So I don't get infinite installs!?!?!? BOOOO!!!!! Time to go the illegal route then!

Eh, I didn't see the smiley on your post.

You get three licenses so you can have it installed on three Macs within that household simultaneously. If you reformat or upgrade a machine you can reinstall that license on the new drive/machine, as long as its gone from the old one. It's not limited to three installs, just to three simultaneous licenses.

 

[Nermal]

3 liceneses? So I don't get infinite installs!?!?!? BOOOO!!!!! Time to go the illegal route then!

Just for clarification, as CanadaRAM said above, it's three licences. You are allowed to install it on up to three computers, but can install it as many times as you like on those three systems. And if you remove it from one system, you can install onto a fourth (and so on).

 

[WillMak]

Eh, I didn't see the smiley on your post.

You get three licenses so you can have it installed on three Macs within that household simultaneously. If you reformat or upgrade a machine you can reinstall that license on the new drive/machine, as long as its gone from the old one. It's not limited to three installs, just to three simultaneous licenses.

Oh ok that's A LOT BETTER. I use to reformat my pc like twice a year and I was worried about what would happen if I had to reformat as much with my new ibook as much as my old xp.

 

[Chundles]

Oh ok that's A LOT BETTER. I use to reformat my pc like twice a year and I was worried about what would happen if I had to reformat as much with my new ibook as much as my old xp.

Haa! Haa haa!!

Reformat? What izz thees re-for-mat?

 

[AmigoMac]

Oh ok that's A LOT BETTER. I use to reformat my pc like twice a year and I was worried about what would happen if I had to reformat as much with my new ibook as much as my old xp.

I haven't formatted my mac, it's 1.5 years old and actually since I got it hasn't been off. Just sleeping. Why format?

 

[GodBless]

The Office 2004 (retail) and Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition have the same programs (just the same as the Trial version on your drive). The Office Pro 2004 adds VirtualPC.

The differences between the Retail and the Student and Teacher Edition are:

• You have to be a student, a teacher, or the parent of a student living in your house in order to qualify for the S&T edition.
• You get three licenses, for three machines at the same household with the S&T Ed (does not apply to children who are living away at school)
• You cannot resell or transfer the S&T edition, even if you no longer use it.
• The S&T Edition doesn't qualify for any reduced cost upgrades - if you want Office 2007 or whatever, you will have to pay full price.

You are leaving out the most important reason why people should not to buy the Student and Teacher Edition. With the Student and Teacher Edition business usage is prohibited. In other words the only thing you can do with it is nothing significant at all because you can't use it for real world purposes. This is why I never recommend it to anyone because after someone is done with college they won't be able to legally use it any more. All in all the Student and Teacher Edition it is a dead end.

 

[greatdevourer]

I think I'm one of a very few people who has ever reformatted a Mac, and that was because I'd screwed it completely (may need to reformat it again - I'm not nice to the kernal. It's been modded so many times that I can't count)

 

[tjwett]

I wouldn't call AppleWorks pure crap. It's old and ugly but it still does a good job for certain tasks. I often use it to open Excel sheets that Office thinks are corrupt and refuses to handle. Office has caused an outrageous number of headaches for me and my clients. Pretty much keeps me in business as far as help desk is concerned.

Some of the most ridiculous right off the top of my head....

-Having a decent amount of fonts on your system causes the launching of an Office app to either hang infinitely or simply crash. very useful!

-Consistently eats its own children by corrupting perfectly working files for no reason.

-Horrid UI across the line

-The Entourage Database is a nightmare

-Entourage chokes on very large message counts. Yeah, like who in an office would have a lot of emails?

-Endless number of cryptic error messages popup on a daily basis for no good reason with no explanation or fix ever provided by Microshaft

-Installing Office Mac 2004 ST causes major errors in XCode, simply inexcusable.

-Annoying Microsuck licensing

Cost to buy $399

I know it is the worldwide standard and all that for all the suits of the world but when TextEdit does a better job of opening Word docs than um...Word, it's time to look elsewhere when possible.

-TextEdit creates perfectly suitable Word docs with enough (maybe more) style for most boring work. Pages is unbelievable when you need to do something not-ugly.

-A presentation is about looks and grabbing attention and delivery of information and Keynote shames PowerPoint across the board.

-Tiger Mail is a fantastic email client and far more easy to manage for user and admin than Entourage. It also handles large amounts of mail rather well.

-iCal and Address Book are more powerful than you think and are fairly tightly integrated

-AppleWorks, unfortunately is the only commercial alternative to Excel. It isn't the best but it works and opens and saves Excel docs more reliably than Excel.

Cost to buy: AppleWorks Free w/iBook, iMac, eMac or $79 from the store. iWork $79

 

[mad jew]

-Tiger Mail is a fantastic email client and far more easy to manage for user and admin than Entourage. It also handles large amounts of mail rather well.

Agreed.

-iCal and Address Book are more powerful than you think and are fairly tightly integrated.

With AppleWorks? Care to elaborate? This sounds interesting.

 

[20rogersc]

How about totally screwing M$ by not using their products at all. Have you tried OpenOffice (requires x11) or NeoOfficeJ (aqua version of OpenOffice)?? An Open Source app that allows you to do exactly the same thing as Office:Mac, but they are free!!

::20ROGERSC::

 

[tjwett]

With AppleWorks? Care to elaborate? This sounds interesting.

well what i meant literally was that iCal and Address Book (and Mail) are fairly tightly integrated. this was to compare to the MS Office equivalent, Entourage. now, AppleWorks is not integrated into the new breed of OS X apps at all, not out-of-the-box. but for those of us who's lives are automated by AppleScript...EVERY app is tightly integrated. iCal, Address Book, Mail, FileMaker and AppleWorks all work together for me everyday to handle by scheduling, automatic invoice generation, mailing lists and more. although i should admit i am moving over to Marketcircle DayLite for a lot of work as my business grows.

 

[Josh]

I don't know how every university works, but at MSU, if you are a student you can get Office Standard 2004 (not student and teacher ed.) for like $65.

Of course, if youre not a student, chances are you know someone who is

I'd check around the campus computer store before ordering from anywhere else - I got office for $65 and Keynote for $39 last year.

 

[tjwett]

I don't know how every university works, but at MSU, if you are a student you can get Office Standard 2004 (not student and teacher ed.) for like $65.

Of course, if youre not a student, chances are you know someone who is

I'd check around the campus computer store before ordering from anywhere else - I got office for $65 and Keynote for $39 last year.

I'm curious... After purchasing Office, how much would you say you use it over the Apple equivalents? For instance, how often do you use PowerPoint over Keynote? Or opt for Word over Pages, or Entourage over Mail? I ask because so often I see people purchase Office and then get such little use out of the full package. I try to convince my clients who only need to "open word docs from work" or "make slides" that they can buy these things separately but they always insist on getting the whole thing and never use it all.

 

[andiwm2003]

I don't know how every university works, but at MSU, if you are a student you can get Office Standard 2004 (not student and teacher ed.) for like $65.

Of course, if youre not a student, chances are you know someone who is

I'd check around the campus computer store before ordering from anywhere else - I got office for $65 and Keynote for $39 last year.

in the worst case you can get the student edition via ebay. they usually forget to ask for your student id.

in general the ms office for mac is a good powerful office suite. yes, there are the usual ms typical annoyances but at least in my hands it works robust. and the fact to be fully compatible with my windows enviroment at work is worth a lot (compatibility means not only all files, also to know how to use the programs, having template slides, having templates for excel sheets, graphs that i use often, building blocks for praesentations. so basically I am compatible, not only the files).


i think it's worth th $149.

andi

 

[devilot]

I'm curious... After purchasing Office, how much would you say you use it over the Apple equivalents? <snip> I try to convince my clients who only need to "open word docs from work" or "make slides" that they can buy these things separately but they always insist on getting the whole thing and never use it all.

I never use Apple's word processors... and I definitely fall into the category of not using "it all," but as we should all know, there are plenty of people willing to pay a little extra for a pretty, easier to use interface, as well as for a bit of familiarity. So I figure MS office cost me a bit, but that's fine by me because now I know there is no issue w/ Windows compatibility, I know where to find all the tools and options, I like the look and feel, so it's worth the extra cost to me, regardless of how much of the suite I use.

 

[Josh]

I'm curious... After purchasing Office, how much would you say you use it over the Apple equivalents? For instance, how often do you use PowerPoint over Keynote? Or opt for Word over Pages, or Entourage over Mail? I ask because so often I see people purchase Office and then get such little use out of the full package. I try to convince my clients who only need to "open word docs from work" or "make slides" that they can buy these things separately but they always insist on getting the whole thing and never use it all.

Pages is a horrible program. Sure, it's great for quick flyers or something like that, but for writing large papers, it's not comparible to Word at all. Two totally different uses.

I do agree - and I think most will - that Keynote (especially KN2) is better than PowerPoint. However, saving so that it opens on old computers running in a University's comp lab often doesn't produce excellent results. Saving as a quicktime is the only way to go. But there are times when an actual presentation is needed, that will open 100% and work as it's supposed to. So there are still times when PowerPoint is needed (especially for work).

Entourage VS Mail is entirely subjective, and the opinions vary greatly from person to person. I prefer Mail, but here's the kicker:

I can get the entire MS Office Suite for $65, where as iWork is $79. In addition to superior word processing and gaurunteed powerpoints, I also get Excel - an app which has no rival, and is absolutely necessary.

So iWork not only comes with LESS, it costs MORE, which makes it not even worth considering.

OpenOffice "works", but poor font rendering and buggy gui's don't help productivity.

Apple does not make anything to contend with MS Office. Apple makes programs that can mimick office and get by with similar results, but in the end, Office comes out on top every single time. And when you can have it all for a smaller price, it's a no brainer.

 

[andiwm2003]

......................I can get the entire MS Office Suite for $65, where as iWork is $79. In addition to superior word processing and gaurunteed powerpoints, I also get Excel - an app which has no rival, and is absolutely necessary..................

well that answers all questions. i would buy even excel alone for $65. i think it's worth it.

i checked on one rival of excel. don't rmember the name but there is a thread about excel alternatives. it was suggested there. unfortunately it is a few hundred dollars. way too expensive.

andi

 

[tjwett]

Mariner Calc is a good, inexpensive Excel alternative in case anyone is looking.

It's good to hear others opinions on the whole Office thing as it is something that comes up quite often for me, almost daily. I guess I always just try to avoid it at all costs, and tell others to do the same. But it appears as though people actually like Office. And not because they just don't know any better and think they need it, but because they actually do like it. I will never see any good in Microsoft's UI design or their Wizards or any of that but that's just MS and they will always be that way I suppose.

I don't write papers or calculate numbers or do anything "officey" more than absolutely necessary so the only side of Office that I see is the problems people have with it and the hell that involves troubleshooting something that isn't actually broken. If I had my way we'd all be on BeOS running Gobe Productive.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I don't know how every university works, but at MSU, if you are a student you can get Office Standard 2004 (not student and teacher ed.) for like $65.

Of course, if youre not a student, chances are you know someone who is

I'd check around the campus computer store before ordering from anywhere else - I got office for $65 and Keynote for $39 last year.

Yes, and you are subject to the same restrictions in the licence, including "students, thou shalt not resell thine Student version."

 

[Chundles]

You lucky US University goers, we here is Aus pay the full price for the Student & Teacher edition ($299 AUD) even at the university bookstore. The only way we can get a student discount is online from Apple with proof of ID - ($249AUD)