Microsoft Launches Mac Office 2008

[Frosty1]

hey

Ya I just got office 2008 and I definitly like it better then 2004. Its noticably faster and the interface is almost like 2007 for PC, which I fin to be better than 2003 as well. It does take sometime to get used to but its Devi it'll a good upgrade.

Typing this on my toucclh so sry for mistakes.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

I think that the Mac BU at MS is so independent from Microsoft Proper that it deserves a second look. Having said that, if the program's speed isn't optimized, then I'll stick to LaTeX and Keynote, and if I must, OOo.



BibTeX.

Have you ever tried out Lyx? http://www.lyx.org

Thats what I use for any kind of academic writing and I love it. There are even people who do their slides with it

 

[justagirl2]

Help!

i've never posted anything before but i just got a macbook for christmas and along with it, office 2004. there used to be that link on the home page about upgrading to 2008 for really cheap if you had recently bought 2004. but now it isn't there!!! did i miss it??? am i too late??

 

[Cloudsurfer]

You'd expect Microsoft to go ahead and make Messenger a more up to date instant messenger, ditching the brushed metal theme and making it look more streamlined. But no, they decided to leave it for what it is.

 

[Philsy]

Another word processor that pretends to be a DTP programme...

It's a shame Pages doesn't open and save .doc files as a default instead of a propriety format that no one else can open - then there'd be less reason to need Word. Any reason why Apple didn't do this?

 

[HLdan]

Note: the loading time of an app is not the most important speed issue of an app.
An app like PowerPoint MUST now operate at excellent speed using large media files on an Intel Mac, and the load time of it is not too important.

Get a Mac SE30 with System 6.0.1 on it. That boots a hell of a lot quicker than a Mac Pro 3.2 GHz.

I have to agree with Sethro, I just got Mac Office 2008 at the Macworld Expo yesterday and while it's pretty nice on features (aside from the lack of VB Macros) the load times of the apps are slow.
It's really disappointing because I have a 2.8Ghz iMac.
Office 2007 on Windows loads near instant on the entire suite. Hopefully with updates the launch times will be better but I hate seeing the Windows version launch near instant and the Mac version launches like the whole suite like it's running in Rosetta.

 

[Philsy]

.
Office 2007 on Windows loads near instant on the entire suite. Hopefully with updates the launch times will be better but I hate seeing the Windows version launch near instant and the Mac version launches like the whole suite like it's running in Rosetta.

I've been told that is because windows preloads the office apps by default, unless you set things otherwise.

 

[nomoredinobones]

Students beware! No EndNote Support

So is it worth the upgrade from Office 2004 for a student?

Definitely one to avoid for students. How am I supposed to write my thesis without EndNote compatibility? They've shafted a ton of academics (at least those of us who aren't culturally acclimatized to LaTex) by dropping Visual Basic support, or whatever it was that the Endnote Cite-While-You-Write feature required for use. Office 2004 is sucky under Rosetta as well, I should have just bought a used PPC Powerbook instead of this shiny, shiny MBP.

Word 2004 is tolerable I guess (my boss is using it) and for presentations Keynote is way better than PPT anyway.

 

[samh004]

I've got it and I must say the interface has improved so much, it's so nice, but I still think it takes about the same time to load on my MacBook as the non-universal version did.

 

[TheMacPotato]

WHO CARES??? Lol... Seriously, why would I spend $400 when there is iWork, Neo Office, Open Office, and a bunch of others??? Microsoft sucks

erm no it costs just $130 for a home user. iWork is not a fully fledged office suite. Sure slag of MS as much as you like, MS word is the industry standard.

 

[MattyP30]

i really need the reference manager sofwtare I use to become compatible before I can use word - I've had to keep my old install of word until endnote becomes compatible!

 

[koobcamuk]

Are they going to upgrade msn messenger too? It came with office 2008 but its just the same version as before.

They're making windows live messenger soon apparently.

 

[Blue Velvet]

But the biggest improvement is the addition of a new view option called Publishing Layout.

Oh, goody. All you pre-press people, stand by for the inevitable onslaught of 'publishing layouts'.

 

[TheHareBear]

No Ultimate Steal

I contacted the (UK) Ultimate Steal people to find out when Office for Mac 2008 would be added to the Ultimate Steal offer.
The first response was along the lines of not currently, but keep checking back.
I then asked when it was likely to be decided upon and just received this response:
"There are currently no plans to add Office for Mac to the Ultimate Steal online store. We apologize for any inconvenience."

I have just asked if there is anyone I could write to to ask it to be added and said that I was sure they would make a lot more sales that way.

Andy

 

[kaiwai]

They're making windows live messenger soon apparently.

I heard the rumours too - version 7, and apparently it will finally include video support, 2p2 file transferring etc.

 

[Tyrannosaurs]

erm no it costs just $130 for a home user. iWork is not a fully fledged office suite. Sure slag of MS as much as you like, MS word is the industry standard.

with the new "home and student" edition pricing, the benefits of using what is a close to an industry standard as exists (Office) more than outweigh the very small price difference.

anyone know how many licenses the home and student version covers? 2004 student used to cover 3, is this the same for 2008? if not then the iWork pricing looks good once you have 2 or 3 machines.

 

[dukebound85]

wow talk about a massive upgrade in size over v.x

went from 200megs to close to 1 gig for student/home editions of each

also, which the cpu usage is down from v.x the ram usage is ALOT higher

 

[Consultant]

Office 2008 is already installed on the demo Macs at the Apple Store I went to yesterday.

 

[xUKHCx]

wow talk about a massive upgrade in size over v.x

went from 200megs to close to 1 gig for student/home editions of each

Office 2004 is ~600 MB on mine and 2008 is ~800MB not too bad

 

[zirngast99]

fully agree

Definitely one to avoid for students. How am I supposed to write my thesis without EndNote compatibility? They've shafted a ton of academics (at least those of us who aren't culturally acclimatized to LaTex) by dropping Visual Basic support, or whatever it was that the Endnote Cite-While-You-Write feature required for use. Office 2004 is sucky under Rosetta as well, I should have just bought a used PPC Powerbook instead of this shiny, shiny MBP.

Word 2004 is tolerable I guess (my boss is using it) and for presentations Keynote is way better than PPT anyway.

Just can fully agree - in academia you will be lost with this shiny "Office for Dummies" - MS obviously is going for my granny as a potential costumer. She definitly needs all those "help me, I'm lost"-features and doesn't want to be bothered with VBA code.

If you are doing some form of business studies, you need VBA support (at least this holds true for me) AND the cross-plattform compatability. So Apple Script is no real option. Here in Europe (Austria) we use quite a lot of vba-based plug-ins for excel...

How am I supposed to collaborate wirh my friends on some topic? "Hey guys, you need to buy a Mac?" Guess, this wont work well.

I read the blog of some guy from MS business unit for Mac, explaing why they didn't bother to (just couldn't) reprogram VBA - REALLY felt sorry for him and his mates... Life is soooo hard to those people; it was just not possible to give it only a new interface. No, from scratch they would have to do it - soo bad!!

Anyway they came up wih this glorious idea of just giving Office some new nobodyneedsitanyway "features" and a new - how cool is that - file format that uses much less space! Now I can store a minimum of 1.000.000.000 excel files instead of 900.000.000! Thank's MS! Appreciate that very much (and I'm going to get a 1 TB external Harddrive to multiply that by 1.000.000)
(http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/)

I'm sure that the lack of VBA puts every academic/corporate Mac-user in a very lonely positon....

 

[jfremani]

Slow + lacking tool pack add-on

My boss snagged this bad boy and I can confirm that the app launch time is very sluggish. Also, have had difficulties getting the data analysis tool pack installed, for regressions.

 

[scuzy]

Anyone know when this wil lbe available on MSDN or Software Assurance on microsofts site? Or will it be on the Home use program ?

 

[Virgil-TB2]

I really want this app.
For real work, you really do need Excel. Nothing works better. Maybe one day, Numbers will replace Excel for me ...

From the MacWorld review of Excel 2008:

Appearances can be deceiving, however—Excel 2008 is a major rewrite, designed to run natively on Intel-powered Macs as well as PowerPC-based machines. This release of Excel also offers some new features, though it drops at least one major area of functionality. As a result, Excel 2008 may leave you feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

And MacWorld is basically just a marketing engine that drives web ads. I don't think they've even heard of the concept of "critical review," and they usually go out of their way to be especially kind to Microsoft.

I think if even they are "underwhelmed," there is definitely reason for concern.

... and Entourage is Entourage.

The very existence of Entourage is one of the main reasons to avoid Office IMO.

But seriously, even if you like Entourage, (and lots of people do), what good is a PIM app that can't be easily backed up? I mean that's the stuff you really, really, want to back up, right?

Another word processor that pretends to be a DTP programme...

It's a shame Pages doesn't open and save .doc files as a default instead of a propriety format that no one else can open - then there'd be less reason to need Word. Any reason why Apple didn't do this?

It doesn't do it by default, but at least it does it.

I often use Pages as a sort of "Word cleaner."

You can open an old word document, rationalise the styles in just a few moments work in the styles sidebar, and then export as Word. You end up with a significantly cleaner, leaner Word document.

The only problem is you have to save the document in Pages format before you can do the export, and it will take you a while to go through all your Word documents. So in the end, you start to wonder why the heck you are bothering with the last (export) step, and why not work in Pages altogether?

 

[Roy]

i've never posted anything before but i just got a macbook for christmas and along with it, office 2004. there used to be that link on the home page about upgrading to 2008 for really cheap if you had recently bought 2004. but now it isn't there!!! did i miss it??? am i too late??

You said it. Too late. The offer ran for several months, but now it's over.

 

[stoutboy1]

i've never posted anything before but i just got a macbook for christmas and along with it, office 2004. there used to be that link on the home page about upgrading to 2008 for really cheap if you had recently bought 2004. but now it isn't there!!! did i miss it??? am i too late??

You're not to late at all. You have until Feb 14th 2008 to submit your info for the upgrade. You can still get the form here.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/go/promotions/supersuitedeal/default.mspx

Expect a long wait. I submitted my form the 15th of November and the status says backorderd and that it'll ship march 3rd. Oh well, I made $80 upgrading. Thanks Microsoft.