frinky23 said:
Wel how about you buy me copy and mail it to me. Heck i will even go so far as to pay you $20
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Mac Office 2004 Shipping in May
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Wel how about you buy me copy and mail it to me. Heck i will even go so far as to pay you $20
frankly said:Have you tried OmniGraffle? It even reads and saves in Visio format.
The only product I wish they would bring is Project because I haven't found software on the Mac that does what that does. If someone has a suggestion I'd like to hear it
Later, Frank
I second the recommendation for OmniGraffle. I bought the Pro version mainly just to support the company, since the standard version was "free" on my G5. It is an excellent product with a very nice interface. It doesn't have the template ("stencil" in Graffle world) library of Visio, but there are numerous free templates out there, and I find it to be an exceptional product. Demo versions are free at OmniGroup. And, no, I don't work for them or know anyone who does, but I like to promote good Mac software, and this is good Mac software.
With OmniGraffle in my arsenal, I don't see any need for me to upgrade to Office'04. Some cool features, but nothing I need. Perhaps if I worked with a lot of other people, but I don't really need to record voice notes when I'm in a meeting with myself (the voices are all in my head anyway
).
frankly said:
Agreed. It was acceptible in the late 90's. Now it is too long in the tooth. Office blows it away. It pains me to say that, but it's evident to anyone who's used both.
ssnmx said:You think that's cheap??
I got Office v.X for a whooping $7 at my university...
And how much are you paying for tuition, ssnmx, so that your school can subsidize your version of Office?
Escher
orion123 said:
NOT good news - this still isn't REAL Exchange Server support. Outlook 2001 in classic is still the only way to get close.
great job Microsoft! you still can't get it right!
frankly said:Have you tried OmniGraffle? It even reads and saves in Visio format.
The only product I wish they would bring is Project because I haven't found software on the Mac that does what that does. If someone has a suggestion I'd like to hear it
Later, Frank
FastTrack Schedule (AEC Software) is about as close as you'll get. They will even translate Project files you submit to them, but in my experience, Project 2000 files didn't get translated too well.
OmniGraffle Pro works great - except for the lack of stencils like Visio Pro has.
For everyone here bitching and whining and bashing Microsoft - I don't know what world you are living in, but in the land of corporate America (and the world), and American government. Even IBM, which until recently required the use of SmartSuite internally, has given in to Office (it used to drive me CRAZY to get Freelance presentations!). Office is as essential to Mac users as OS X. As an IT manager, I depend on Office for everyday and business-critical work. I have had to resort to OmniGraffle and FastTrack because of the lack of Visio and Project on the Mac. I don't like having to use my Dell desktop to edit a Project file or Visio network chart. Office is the most important app for the Mac to be taken seriously in the business environment.
When I first got my PowerBook, my co-workers would ask me "Does it run Windows (or Word, or Excel", or "Will you be able to open the Word file I am sending you?" - and these are IT people.
In an ideal world, SmartSuite and Corel's suite would be contenders, on both platforms. If not for market share, at lest for competition's sake and to keep Microsoft on its toes.
I am eagerly awaiting Office 2004 - I had my pre-order in on 4/1, as soon as the Apple site had it up. Some of its features put it ahead of its Windows counterpart, so I will have another thing to gloat over them.
The skinny on Office 2004 Pro and VPC 7
That's just the Apple store, though. Other Mac retailers are also accepting pre-orders for Office 2004. Look around - http://www.macmall.com/ has Office 2004 topping its front-page "Special Offers" list, http://www.macconnection.com/ and http://www.maczone.com/ have Office 2004 top center on their homepages. (MacZone even offers a free copy of Zoo Tycoon for Mac if you buy the Student and Teacher edition.)
All three of those sites are taking pre-orders for Standard, Student and Teacher AND Professional editions of Office 2004 - and all three of them have information on ship dates for Office 2004 Professional Edition!
Of course... they all have DIFFERENT information on ship dates...
MacMall says Office 2004 Pro "Starts shipping end of July 2004."
MacZone says Office 2004 Pro "Product Ships July 7th, 2004"
MacConnection says Office 2004 Pro is "Coming in June"
Do we really know any more than we did before, at this point? No. But people who "should know" are throwing out numbers in the June-July timeframe. I'm a little disappointed since I have to do something all Windows-y in VPC every 3 months, and it looks like the June run will still be on my G3. Come September, though, I hope to have VPC on the G5.
tny said:
That's just the Apple store, though. Other Mac retailers are also accepting pre-orders for Office 2004. Look around - http://www.macmall.com/ has Office 2004 topping its front-page "Special Offers" list, http://www.macconnection.com/ and http://www.maczone.com/ have Office 2004 top center on their homepages. (MacZone even offers a free copy of Zoo Tycoon for Mac if you buy the Student and Teacher edition.)
All three of those sites are taking pre-orders for Standard, Student and Teacher AND Professional editions of Office 2004 - and all three of them have information on ship dates for Office 2004 Professional Edition!
Of course... they all have DIFFERENT information on ship dates...
MacMall says Office 2004 Pro "Starts shipping end of July 2004."
MacZone says Office 2004 Pro "Product Ships July 7th, 2004"
MacConnection says Office 2004 Pro is "Coming in June"
Do we really know any more than we did before, at this point? No. But people who "should know" are throwing out numbers in the June-July timeframe. I'm a little disappointed since I have to do something all Windows-y in VPC every 3 months, and it looks like the June run will still be on my G3. Come September, though, I hope to have VPC on the G5.
I cringe every time MS touts "Mac only/Mac first" features. I'm totally not interested. Just give us a version that is EXACTLY on par with Windows. Give us Visio. Give us Project. Give us REAL exchange support. Make sure red x's don't appear when we open documents with images.
But at least long file name support is a start.
(Why did that take so long exactly?)
But at least long file name support is a start.
(Why did that take so long exactly?
)
I'd also like to see a more complete Mac Office suite from Microsoft, with Visio, Project, Publisher, Outlook (Mac OS X native, please) and Access (I know Publisher and Access aren't the greatest applications for their fields, but having Mac versions will ease compatibility issues). Any other MS Office/Windows applications I forgot? I'd like to see those too.soosy said:I cringe every time MS touts "Mac only/Mac first" features. I'm totally not interested. Just give us a version that is EXACTLY on par with Windows. Give us Visio. Give us Project. Give us REAL exchange support. Make sure red x's don't appear when we open documents with images.
But at least long file name support is a start.
(Why did that take so long exactly?
<edit> I won't buy any Mac version of Office until these applications appear and work as advertised, too.</edit>
Who cares
Who cares if M$ have released another version of office. My office manages quite well without it, I guess most of you guys could too if you were all a little more positive.
We send all our files as pdf's, if we receive any M$ docs we send them back and ask for it to be resent in a universal format such as pdf's. We have never had a problem with this approach.
OK so some docs need to be able to be edited, no problem-if it's plain text, there are numerous universal products that can do the job. If its graphics or publishing then office is not up to it anyway.
Granted there are more features with office, but who really needs them, for us it just complicates the interface, we like it nice and simple.
And yes I have purchased a copy, before anyone suggests different, I thought we might need it, but having bought it, this is how I know now we don't need it
Can't say I agree with those that rip off copies though, bottom line is that's stealing, maybe you's should all think a while before ripping it off, it only promotes this silly and untrue notion that office is a universal product.
Lets hope Apple bring out an update soon that breaks office 2004.
Who cares if M$ have released another version of office. My office manages quite well without it, I guess most of you guys could too if you were all a little more positive.
We send all our files as pdf's, if we receive any M$ docs we send them back and ask for it to be resent in a universal format such as pdf's. We have never had a problem with this approach.
OK so some docs need to be able to be edited, no problem-if it's plain text, there are numerous universal products that can do the job. If its graphics or publishing then office is not up to it anyway.
Granted there are more features with office, but who really needs them, for us it just complicates the interface, we like it nice and simple.
And yes I have purchased a copy, before anyone suggests different, I thought we might need it, but having bought it, this is how I know now we don't need it
Can't say I agree with those that rip off copies though, bottom line is that's stealing, maybe you's should all think a while before ripping it off, it only promotes this silly and untrue notion that office is a universal product.
Lets hope Apple bring out an update soon that breaks office 2004.
I have office purely for receiving docs.. everything that goes out from me is PDF, and no one has a problem.
As long as people can read the doc (most everyone is a newb, so they freak easy, but you know that) then they don't care. They double click it, and it opens right there and can be read and moved around. That's all people care about.
Problem is, since people (read: execs) know nothing about tech/standards/usability, they creat all docs in .doc. I'm hoping that the more PDF's they get, the greater the likelyhood that someone will ask "hey, how do I make one of these things??"
As long as people can read the doc (most everyone is a newb, so they freak easy, but you know that) then they don't care. They double click it, and it opens right there and can be read and moved around. That's all people care about.
Problem is, since people (read: execs) know nothing about tech/standards/usability, they creat all docs in .doc. I'm hoping that the more PDF's they get, the greater the likelyhood that someone will ask "hey, how do I make one of these things??"
fatfish said:
Some_Big_Spoon said:
I had assumed (probably wrongly) that as like on the mac, it is a simple click to create a pdf from office for windows, if not then I have even less respect for it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking office as a product, I'm sure there are those that need it. I just object to the unfounded belief that everyone needs it.
Same here - except not all my output is in PDF format. I use plain text or RTF sometimes too (but I probably shouldn't use RTF - it doesn't always transfer correctly across platforms). I like the way PDF preserves formatting, even for the most complex documents, and how Mac OS X makes creating a PDF from any application that can print so simple.Some_Big_Spoon said:I have office purely for receiving docs.. everything that goes out from me is PDF, and no one has a problem.
As long as people can read the doc (most everyone is a newb, so they freak easy, but you know that) then they don't care. They double click it, and it opens right there and can be read and moved around. That's all people care about.
Problem is, since people (read: execs) know nothing about tech/standards/usability, they creat all docs in .doc. I'm hoping that the more PDF's they get, the greater the likelyhood that someone will ask "hey, how do I make one of these things??"
You know, I'm really not sure.. I work with a Mac (yay!!) and won't work with anything else, so you may be able to make a PDF in wondows office, but I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't.
That being said, you can use acrobat on the wondows side, or OpenOffice to do it should it be funky.
I'd be interested in knowing too.
That being said, you can use acrobat on the wondows side, or OpenOffice to do it should it be funky.
I'd be interested in knowing too.
fatfish said:
Yeah, that's once of those things that you take for granted when you get away from your Mac.. Often, when someone I work with, or know, has a simple thing they can't do on windows, my first response is usually "why wouldn't the OS, or a program distributed with the OS or computer, just allow you to do that?"
For all the gripes we've been having with Apple lately on hardware, you've just got to give it to them on the software side.. it's just so simple to get things done. But I'll stop my love fest for the software and just give a grumpy face to the hardware :-( ;-)
For all the gripes we've been having with Apple lately on hardware, you've just got to give it to them on the software side.. it's just so simple to get things done. But I'll stop my love fest for the software and just give a grumpy face to the hardware :-( ;-)
wrldwzrd89 said:
Acrobat for Windows comes with an Office plug-in that makes creating PDFs from Office documents simpler than it would be otherwise. I was once at a job that had this configuration - I even tried making a few PDFs with it. It was easier to use than going through Acrobat, but nowhere near as simple as Mac OS X makes it (just click print, click save as PDF, give the file a name, and Mac OS X does the rest). This works with ANY application than can print (in Mac OS X), not just Office.Some_Big_Spoon said:
<edit>Yes! I'm a macrumors 6502 now!</edit>
Is that a freebee? The plug-in I mean.. or does it only come with the preemo version of Acrobat?
wrldwzrd89 said:
I just like to point out, if you look VERY closely at the Mac Office 2004 Professional box, you can see "Includes Virtual PC 2004"
The free part of Acrobat is Acrobat Reader (for displaying pdfs). I think you have to buy Acrobat to make pdfs from Word docs with Adobe software.Some_Big_Spoon said:
Well, we do have Microsoft's line on it:MacsRgr8 said:
Office Pro will ship by June 1st. How do I know this? Simple - Microsoft has their Technology Guarantee program where you can buy today and upgrade for shipping & handling. The terms of the program are:Microsoft said:
1) you must buy the old version within 30 days of availability of the new version.
2) you must buy by June 30th.
For the standard version, you have to buy it by May 14th, 30 days after availability (give or take a few days). So, why does the program run through June 30th? Must be for the pro version.
Alot of potential G5 owners are waiting on it. My workflow depends on VPC. No VPC no G5. New VPC, new honkin' G5. I hope Apple knows this.MacsRgr8 said:I bet alot of G5 owners are waiting for it. But somehow I feel the wait could be a very long one (... similar to new PowerMacs
Well, that's no fun.. I'm guessing there might be some free apps out there, maybe on Version Tracker but for your average windows user (which is all of them) they'll fork over for the Acrobat..
I should look at a windows XP set up more closely.. poke around.. get some ammo for my Apple bias ;-)
I should look at a windows XP set up more closely.. poke around.. get some ammo for my Apple bias ;-)
Doctor Q said:
Doctor Q said:
That's right. At a previous employer, we had MS Office (on Windows) and had purchased Adobe Acrobat Pro so that we'd get the plugin allowing PDF output from MS Office. You need the Pro version, which is in the range of $500 per seat. MS Office by itself does not have this capability.
However, smart companies will just use OpenOffice, even if they won't give up MS Office entirely. You can use its one-click export to PDF feature without need to purchase additional software. For us Mac users, the NeoOffice/J version is my favorite -- www.neooffice.org/java/