Zaty said:
So if you have a choice, go for 2004 because it's up to date whereas v. X. is 3 years old.
Three years as opposed to what I was using 10 years ago that did pretty much the same things in the same way and still works if you have an old computer?
Upgrades are a very important part of Microsoft's business plan. They'll put them out whether they add anything of value or not. How do you really improve a word processor or a spreadsheet? You don't. You can't. They are what they are and they've been pretty well perfected for a long time. So what you do instead of improve them is add unnecessary features that just serve to bloat the software. Just look at the preference pane in Word! All I want to worry about is how big the text is, what font to use, how to space it, how to indent, and as a bonus a spell checker. That's all the options you need in a "word processor."
People are saying that Office 2004 is more stable and responsive than Office X. So what? Shouldn't X have been that stable and responsive? Don't make it sound like Microsoft added anything. They fixed a mistake, that's all.
I've recently rid my Macs of all Microsoft products. For word processing I'm using TextEdit, which comes with OS X. People often overlook it, but it does the job. It doesn't have the bells and whistles (i.e. bloat) of Word, but it doesn't take up my whole screen and just generally stays out of my way. I like that. For the rare cases I need to do something more advanced--a page layout or something--I have AppleWorks ($80 retail, $40 student, free on eMac, iMac, and iBooks). I really don't need to use Appleworks often though.
Look at all your options before you buy. You do have options. You do not need to automatically buy Microsoft Office. If you consider all your options (be an informed consumer here--do a little homework) and decide that MS Office is what you need, then buy it. I'm betting that when you really look at what you want to do, you'll see that MS Office is overpriced and overkill for your needs.
