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iBook G4 MS Office?
- Thread starter davewill2010
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eyoungren is right, of course. But why would you want to buy something when there are free alternatives available that fulfill the needs of 95% of users? OpenOffice or LibreOffice are ones that I recommend(LibreOffice because I use it often).
I'd second LibreOffice, but only if you need MS Office compatibility. However, if you just need a super-fast, super-simple office suite I'd recommend AppleWorks 6. I'm a huge fan & use it daily even on my dual 1.8 G5. It's available as a free download from the Macintosh Garden.
Is that download legitimate? Do you think AppleWorks will run on the same machine where iWork is installed?
Macintosh Garden is full of abandon ware that hasn't been updated in donkeys, so as far as I'm concerned it's about as legitimate as you can get when trying to purchase 20 year old software. And yes it works fine alongside iWork '09.
I'd recommend Office 2004. I found 2008 to be total trash and the most sluggish software I've ever used. 2004 even has the 'XML converter' add-on for compatibility with the newer office format.
Libreoffice and the like are no good for if you need compatibility and office centric features. Although, its free so it wouldn't hurt to try it and see if it has what you need.
Libreoffice and the like are no good for if you need compatibility and office centric features. Although, its free so it wouldn't hurt to try it and see if it has what you need.
It offers lots of compatibility, and Microsoft still updates Office 2008 for PPC.
I use 2008 on both of my Macs and my G5 at work. Yes, it's slower than 2004 but what I have found is that that is generally down to fonts. If you do not have a lot of fonts active it will load fast.
One of the bugs I think in it is that no matter how you try to turn off the Font Optimization on startup it always happens. We have well over 4000 fonts at work (not active all at once) and it's always better to open Entourage, Word and Excel before starting Suitcase Fusion. Otherwise you might as well go out for lunch. But if you have a small amount of fonts, or use a font manager the launch speed should be tolerable.
Once open however, Office 2008 performs every bit as fast and responsively as 2004.
Stick with Office 2004/2008
LibreOffice or NeOffice are good alternatives, but there's something about those apps that I don't like...
My honest opinion
Depending on what processor your PPC mac is, use Office 2008 if you have a very fast G4 or G5. 2008 Office was full of bloat and as such took a longer time to load up. Use Monolingual or xslimmer to cut out the INTEL binaries all together and you might gain some speed out of 2008 Office.
2004 Office is my best recommendation for all PPC macs, as its native and no such intel binaries exist in it.
To each their own.. I use 2004 and have no problems with it.
Depending on what processor your PPC mac is, use Office 2008 if you have a very fast G4 or G5. 2008 Office was full of bloat and as such took a longer time to load up. Use Monolingual or xslimmer to cut out the INTEL binaries all together and you might gain some speed out of 2008 Office.
2004 Office is my best recommendation for all PPC macs, as its native and no such intel binaries exist in it.
To each their own.. I use 2004 and have no problems with it.
I like(d) Office 2004. Still have it on my HDs, but don't use it anymore. My biggest problem with it at work though is that while 2004 has the ability to open .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files, it can't save those formats. That's something necessary for us at work.
But on it's own, if you don't need to write files in that format, 2004 is perfectly good and works great. I used it for years and never had a problem with it.
Considering I use 2004 Office for just writing my Resume and sometimes small books I don't really use any fancy stuff requiring Office 2008.
loads of info here guys many thanks for all of your input! looks like I have a good few options to try 
If you are unsure which to use, I would just get Office 2004 which is much faster and its PowerPC native. 2008 is slower in loading up as its loading all that intel bloatware and excess apps along with it.
Also, if you need Visual Basic, 2004 has that as well.
Also, if you need Visual Basic, 2004 has that as well.
loads of info here guys many thanks for all of your input! looks like I have a good few options to try
I have Appleworks 6 and iWork '09 on my iBook G4. Although I don't use either of them very often, I do use both of them and haven't had any problems.
Actually Office 2004 even has functions that Office 2008 lacks, like support for macro's. However the support for DOCX is way better in 2008; with a G5 and 1GB of memory or more, I would definitely chose for the slower 2008.
I know, but since I myself only use Word for making resumes I don't see why I would benefit from 2008 though. Most employers accept .doc anyway over .docx
loads of info here guys many thanks for all of your input! looks like I have a good few options to try
I use Pages sparingly, but it's not an industry standard nor is it as fast in my experience as Office, ironic as that may seem.
I second everyone who said that he should get 2004. My iBook, even with maxed out ram, still lagged like crazy on Libreoffice. I couldn't use that. The same goes with iWork, yet less so. Just pick up Office 2004 on eBay for about $10. BTW: If you need to do presentation stuff, Appleworks sucks. They require you to draw your own backgrounds, for crying out loud! That was my two cents.
Office X
is all the Office I'll ever need, and the XML converter works with it too. Can't save docx files of course. Font managment on 08, as noted above, left a lot to be desired. Nowadays if someone sends me a pptx or docx file, I send it back to them and tell them to give it to me in a doc or ppt file, or don't bother sending it. Not a great way to make friends, but it gets my point across.
True story...Office 2007 (PC version) opened faster in emulation in Virtual PC 7 on a dual G4 I owned then Office 2008 did, on the very same mac. Now that is some sad *****.
is all the Office I'll ever need, and the XML converter works with it too. Can't save docx files of course. Font managment on 08, as noted above, left a lot to be desired. Nowadays if someone sends me a pptx or docx file, I send it back to them and tell them to give it to me in a doc or ppt file, or don't bother sending it. Not a great way to make friends, but it gets my point across.
True story...Office 2007 (PC version) opened faster in emulation in Virtual PC 7 on a dual G4 I owned then Office 2008 did, on the very same mac. Now that is some sad *****.
Office X, specifically Entourage X. No Microsoft Exchange support. As to refusing .docx files, as a business my boss wouldn't get very far with that. A lot of our legals come from municipalities we have contracts with. We have to be able to open their .docx files.
I believe you about Office 2008. Although I've found that they all open pretty fast if I load Suitcase after they open.