Mac Office 2004 Shipping in May

[iPC]

My friends office uses Corel Word Perfect. Yes, word perfect. There are maybe 15 people and only 2 like it. The rest ask why not Office, the response: "We are a Word Perfect office". So even PC people can be stubbornly anti MS.

Most PC people are anti-MS, but have nothing else to use. Your average office can not afford to buy all new hardware (Macs), and re-train everyone how to use their new computer (OS X versus 98/Me/XP), as well as new apps with different interfaces. Your average office worker can barely deal with change on something they recognize (Win98 to WinXP for example), much less something all new.

A new car is not scary to people, but a new computer is. Still haven't figured that one out yet.

*edit for spelling*

 

[GFLPraxis]

Only if its not wrong to pirate Apple's software.

Apple = Good
Microsoft = Evil

Games, Apple, and all other software = Don't pirate them
Microsoft = Burn and die, fools!

 

[Manatee]

I'll upgrade when there's evidence of a significant performance gain in Virtual PC 7.

The other apps already do about 800% of what I need.

 

[iHack]

Office 2004 too new for me

I'm a consultant working with a number of municipalities, universities and engineering firms in the Netherlands.
I run into compatibility problems with Office v. X all the time because most of my clients are still using Office 97 and NT 4.0 (or a mixture of Win98 and Win2K). I have to send them RTF's. I'm guessing this will not be any better if I buy office 2004. And they subsequently blame Apple for any incompatibilities. Go figure.

As anecdotal evidence, I would like to share the following: At the university I worked until recently, and where they sell XP for a few euros to students and employees, all new computers that come with XP pre-installed are re-installed with NT 4.0. I used to have Win2K on my computer. The IT-helpdesk guys had me sign a form forfeiting all their support because my machine was non-standard. This was good, because they made me administrator of my own machine, effectively freeing me of their soup nazi regime.
At a municipality I'm currently working all computers run on NT 4.0, Office 97 and a fixed resolution of 800x600. Even on 17" CRT's. Horrible.
And they are banning USB flash memory sticks. Because they are afraid for the integrity of they data (who knows what kind of silly programs I may be putting on the hard disk). But they are using NT 4.0!! Which is a bigger threat to their data integrity, I ask. Anyways....


M.

 

[wookitus]

VPC

Just out of curiosity, what uses do people have for VPC. I just use mine to test things (like QT movies etc) for windows users.

I design websites on a mac but I need to test my designs in PC browsers. This is the best way to do it because you can have multiple copies of Windows running multiple versions of IE all on one mac.

 

[sushi]

At the university I worked until recently, and where they sell XP for a few euros to students and employees, all new computers that come with XP pre-installed are re-installed with NT 4.0. I used to have Win2K on my computer. The IT-helpdesk guys had me sign a form forfeiting all their support because my machine was non-standard. This was good, because they made me administrator of my own machine, effectively freeing me of their soup nazi regime.
At a municipality I'm currently working all computers run on NT 4.0, Office 97 and a fixed resolution of 800x600. Even on 17" CRT's. Horrible.
And they are banning USB flash memory sticks. Because they are afraid for the integrity of they data (who knows what kind of silly programs I may be putting on the hard disk). But they are using NT 4.0!! Which is a bigger threat to their data integrity, I ask. Anyways....

Wow! I feel your pain.

NT4.0 sucks.

NT 6, er., Win 2K is so much better in that regard.

NT 4's support, or lack thereof for USB, PCMCIA and other devices is terrible.

I feel your pain...as someone who used to work in a NT4 environment.

And as for MSFT file compatability -- even within the PC family versions -- or lack there of I feel your pain as well.

Sushi

 

[~Shard~]

Some of the new features in Office 2004 look interesting, but not enough to warrant buying a copy for myself - I'm running Office V.x and that suits me just fine and will for some time to come! After all, a word precessor is a word processor, a spreadsheet program is a spreadsheet program...

 

[BornAgainMac]

PDF

I'm a consultant working with a number of municipalities, universities and engineering firms in the Netherlands.
I run into compatibility problems with Office v. X all the time because most of my clients are still using Office 97 and NT 4.0 (or a mixture of Win98 and Win2K). I have to send them RTF's. I'm guessing this will not be any better if I buy office 2004. And they subsequently blame Apple for any incompatibilities. Go figure.
M.

Send them as PDF files from the Print command (save as PDF) if they don't need to edit the docs. Probably the fonts are causing problems.

 

[iHack]

Send them as PDF files from the Print command (save as PDF) if they don't need to edit the docs. Probably the fonts are causing problems.

I'n not sure it's the fonts. If I save a .doc file in Rich Text Format, most of them don't even notice the (slight) difference in the icons and probably are hiding the extensions. When I send them a .doc file plus an .rtf for compatibility's sake I get: "hey, you sent me two word files, I can open one but can't open the other, what's with that?"

One can only sigh.

M.

 

[Jookbox]

Right, and if you've been curious about Entourage/Exchange compatability fixes, it looks like there is a bunch of good news:

http://macinchat.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=1936046971&f=5376055081&m=495103951&r=495103951#495103951

"Exchange mail, calendar, address book information - all work, and they appear to work well."

this is sooo awesome. i won't need to use outlook on my pc to make appointments with coworkers now.