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Mac Office 2008 Preview

Cloudsurfer said:
Too bad, Microsoft took too long so I went for iWork '08.
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You know... it's funny you said that! I did the same thing. But eventually, I think M$ will "die out" on the Mac. What I'm trying to say is that Office on the Mac will loose is vamp. I think iWork is becoming the new Office. iWork can only go up hill from here. (at least I think so) That's just my two cents, and I'm probably wrong, but, again, it's that weird feeling I've got in my gut. :apple:

EDIT: While iWork is not as powerful... it will gain some of those cool features. And just for the record... I'm not talking about an overnight downfall... I'm talking about years and years away.
 
I wouldn't even consider getting Office 2008 for my MacBook Pro, as I already have Office 2007 and Parallels 3. Coherence in Parallels is getting better and better at making Windows applications work seamlessly with Mac apps. However, I might consider getting it for my iBook. I was thinking of getting iWork '08, but I decided to wait for Microsoft's offering.

(I'm one of the few people that I know who love the ribbon interface of Office 2007. :p )
 
i hope the new Entourage lets me change my password without having to log onto a vacant PC in my office.

That's my most nagging complaint... that... and having to use Entourage/Office at work in the first place. :)
 
Hmm that site is terrible. I sure hope its not the sign of things to come. My safari tried to open for like few minutes and than opend with error and finally froze.....:D:rolleyes: but back on the topic these ribbons are not all that bad but as someone already mentioned JUST USE PALLETES ON THE SIDE...How hard its gonna be?? With all that tools on the top of the page there is like an 1.5" left of actuall space to work with. Most of the screens is now panoramic in the name of god
 
chr1s60 said:
In my opinion, Office is the only thing Microsoft does better than Apple. I expect that will probably change in the future, but for the time being I will most likely stick with Office.
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I totally agree - I have a MBP with Bootcamp installed for work - the ONLY thing that is keeping me back from ditching XP is Office 2007 - I love it! I hope that 08 for Mac goes one up on them!
 
aah, the "too little too late" team want to prove they're up to something...

and looking at those videos the ribbon thing is no worse than the one on windows office 2007..
 
here's another image of Office '08 i found online... standing by the tree...
282881JOrn_w.jpg
 
mudbug99 said:
As someone who has recently been forced by the IT team to upgrade to Office 2007 at work, I can tell you for a certainty that the ribbon alone will keep me from upgrading. I swear, it sometimes takes my 10 clicks to complete a simple formatting task I used to be able to do quickly from a single screen.
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I agree. The diehard Winbots seem to think that the ribbon is the greatest thing since sliced bread (they happily lap up anything MS tosses their way), but I find it exasperating. There are a few nice aspects, outweighed by the excessive amount of time it takes me to analyze the changing menu each time I want to perform a simple adjustment.

Ribbon interface = fail.

I'm done with Office. Good riddance.
 
looks like a resource hog, with lots of clicks and options you would rarely use. M$ should try something elegant for a change. Maybe send an intern over to hang out with steve and see if something rubs off.
 
I've switched to iWork. Will keep my old version of PPC office around just in case someone sends me a old file or something.
 
LagunaSol said:
I agree. The diehard Winbots seem to think that the ribbon is the greatest thing since sliced bread (they happily lap up anything MS tosses their way), but I find it exasperating. There are a few nice aspects, outweighed by the excessive amount of time it takes me to analyze the changing menu each time I want to perform a simple adjustment.

Ribbon interface = fail.

I'm done with Office. Good riddance.
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Sounds like the people at this forum about Apple. ;)

Regardless, I think that Office is a good tool and I don't think there's too many options to replace it currently. We all know iWork '08 is not in the same league.
 
I'm sure the ribbon was cumulated from years of research and intensive study and investment. LOL

You know what the ribbon is? It's a patch. A patch to make bloated, difficult software seem easier to use. Microsoft has used the same GUI for so long it felt it had to come up with something else, and the ribbon shows that they're out of ideas.

In reality, Microsoft needs to scrap Office and start over again.

Why aren't Mac users clamoring for Office like they do with Adobe and Apple products? Because Office sucks. It's that simple. No one wants it on their machine unless they have to.

We have seen in that past what wonderful software has come from the Mac Business Unit. Windows Media Player for Mac, Microsoft Messenger for Mac, Internet Explorer for Mac. See a pattern?
 
I very rarely have occasion to use Word or Excel, especially since having left my previous employer. It was such a nightmare to try and take data from one finished project (say, a web page on our company site) and stick it into Excel or elsewhere, due to all the damn formatting. I usually took everything through Notepad first, then into the final destination app.

I somewhat do the same thing here at home, but normally when I create text of any real length, I do it in Text Edit as plain text, then copy-n-paste it into wherever it's going, such as a message board. With Word (especially) trying to be all things to all people, many of it's "features" just keep stepping on everything.

I've thought about getting iWork, but I'm not sure I'd get $79 worth of use out of it.
 
Screw "The Ribbon" and the new UI - the only thing I want to hear from M$ is, "we're sorry, but not including Macro support was completely idiotic. We're working to restore this functionality before the Gold Master release."

Oh, and I just worked on Windows Vista today for the first time - it took 10 minutes to get it to connect to a simple WPA network. Any other company that produces this kind of tripe would be out of business.

If M$ were a gas station, they'd currently be selling regular unleaded for $5.95 a gallon.

I'm seriously considering a switch for my organization to Neo/Open Office once they finish the merge.
 
mudbug99 said:
As someone who has recently been forced by the IT team to upgrade to Office 2007 at work, I can tell you for a certainty that the ribbon alone will keep me from upgrading.
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I have to agree with you. That ribbon is NOT INTUITIVE at all! And the stupidest thing about it is that Microsoft has spent the last 15 years training us on where all freaking buttons and links are and then they change everything up for no good reason! The swine!

And Outlook 2007 is the biggest POS of the bunch. Really slow. Slow to load, slow to use... yet fast to crash.

Their desktop search turns an XP machine into one running 95. Slow and prone to crashing.

Office 2003 is quite nice. A lot of good features, runs okay, hardly ever crashes.

I think I'll stick with iWorks too.

It took four years to produce this? :eek:
 
The Website is terrible and slow. At least it confirms they are just sticking with the basic Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage. I am going to stick with iWork '08. Microsoft took so long and didn't even deliver in the end.
 
phytonix said:
The ribbon interface may seems like a lot of clicks.
But what Office 2008 can do in those video seem pretty nice. iWork does not seem as powerful and Office 2008 seem to be able to produce things as pretty.

Wait and see, and I am excited to see how it will turn out to be.
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"Producing something pretty" and "microsoft office" are certainly not mentioned very often in the same sentence. Maybe office is an efficient tool for some tasks, but never ever for producing something pretty. :)
 
well, at least we arent totally forgotten.... but what about Microsoft Messenger? v6?!?! i think windows is on 8 at least!
 
more toolbars

mkrishnan said:
This looks like an improvement on the Windows ribbon, and I'm slowly getting sold on some of their design ideas, but I still think this is wrong in terms of layout... Particularly with more and more widescreen displays, I would've really preferred for them to streamline this same model of functions into the vertical palettes.
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I noticed this too.

The whole world is going widescreen, and Microsoft's "new idea" is yet more toolbars at the top of the screen.

They don't seem to even consider integrating Office with the OS at all. They should be using tool trays, side-drawers or floating context sensitive palettes, but instead we get "Ribbon lite."
 
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