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Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

Wicked1

Wicked1

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
3,283
14
New Jersey
Is the MS Office 2008 really worth it, or does iWorks 09 do exactly the same thing. What I like about the Mac built in stuff is it works, and less crud I have to have loaded on my Mini or MacBook.

I find the iMail and iCal, as well as Addressbook works well for me, and so does iWorks for what I need, but is there really a benefit fro Mac Office 2008, or is it really all about personal preference.:rolleyes:
 
There is good and bad with iWork 09. I've used it and wondered WTF can't I just do this? And the answer is often no. Then in MS Word I find that I have similar moments of WTF can't I just do this?

I hate the new office. I am now forced to use it at work and I truly hate how oddly "user friendly" they think they've made it. I would not recommend Office 2008 to anyone at this point but then again I don't recommend iWork 09.

If you're a student then iWork 09 works well. If you're running a business I believe Office 2008 may be your better choice.

Unfortunately there is no definitive answer and I still run Office 2004 on my macs.
 
Wicked1 said:
Is the MS Office 2008 really worth it, or does iWorks 09 do exactly the same thing. What I like about the Mac built in stuff is it works, and less crud I have to have loaded on my Mini or MacBook.

I find the iMail and iCal, as well as Addressbook works well for me, and so does iWorks for what I need, but is there really a benefit fro Mac Office 2008, or is it really all about personal preference.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Depends what you will use iWork for. If you are using it to print things out then it will work fine. If you want to share documents with Office users then you may have some trouble. iWork doesn't convert advanced formatting very well. I've seen Pages users destroy the formatting of Word docs when they modify them.
 
Much depends on what you do with your office suite.

For instance, are your documents primarily for you, or do you frequently share them and collaborate with others, possibly using different versions Windows or MS Office?

If it's just for your personal consumption, then compatibility (forward or backword) isn't much of a concern.

However, if there is a lot of sharing, then you're probably better off getting on board with whatever standard everyone else is using.

Then there's the "feature set." Most users barely scratch the surface of the functionality and features of the suite components. However, if you're part of that 3% that needs to be able to hyperlink that spreadsheet table to your company's SQL server . . . then follow your IT guy's advice.
 
As other posters have pointed out, it comes down to whether you need to work with others, or share files, or whether you can travel your own path without having to make yourself accountable to anyone else when using these programmes.

Last year, I bought a wonderful MBP and was advised to get iWork with it. I don't doubt that iWork is excellent, but I live an work in a world where everyone, but everyone, uses Word, and I need it for my work, and for the work I do for others (which involves a lot of report writing, editing etc). This meant that Office for Mac was a must, and I have not regretted buying it. Indeed, the fact that in the old days you couldn't use Word at all on a Mac (without stunning skills) was one of the reasons I held off switching for around the best part of a decade.

Cheers and good luck
 
I always used Office on PC in the past so I got 2004 for my Mini. It always worked perfectly fine for me and I liked the interface, so I upgraded to 2008 on the Pro and MacBook.

2008 seems ok, but there's a couple of little oddities that I don't like. It's a pity that everything has to go through iCal and Address Book for syncing with the iPhone; I had a right nightmare when I moved my calendars and contacts over from the Mini onto the Pro.

:apple:
 
If you have Windows on Bootcamp it might be worth getting the 2007 version of Office for Windows. After a short while getting used to the ribbon, Office 2007 is extremely easy to use, and has lots of nice features like previewing your text in a font as you move through the font list. I haven't much experience with the Mac version, but the ui wasn't as easy to use to my eyes.
 
In my experience, Office 2008 is not too buggy but is quite slow. It is way slower than Office 2004. However, in all its slowness, Office 2008 is much more useful than iWork if you do any file exchange with Windows users.

Re: iWork. On its own, iWork 09 is ok, save for the Numbers, which can not even open about one of every two Excel files that I have, let alone work with them. Keynote, as has been said numerous times already, is superior to Powerpoint. However, Pages botches .doc files way too often, such that I could not keep it as the default word processor and had to reinstate Word instead.

If you do not exchange Office files and do not do large spreadsheets, then iWork is a nice package. Otherwise, Office still has no real alternative.
 
Here are my two cents, for what they're worth...

I'm running Office 2008 and like it a lot. It's certainly not completely bug-free or even annoyance-free, but it's really a very good office suite. I think I like it better than Office 2004. If you use and make presentations a lot, it might be good to know that PowerPoint 2008 is definitely the best version to date. As far as Excel is concerned, I've never seen a bad version of it, really. Word is another story, though. Sometimes I hate it. But once every 'feature' is disabled that makes Word think for you, it's actually a pretty darn good text editor. Also, the new themes feature is nice. You can make your own themes, which work like templates on steroids. For quick and dirty text editing, I still like TextEdit best.

To put all this in perspective, though, I have to state that I probably wouldn't be running Office 2008 right now if I hadn't been able to get it for under €50 through my college.
 
I purchased iWork 08 (Family) with my son's MB 18 months ago. I purchased Office 2008 with iMac last year. Having come from a Windows Environment I thought it would be beneficial.

I rate Word way above Pages for the docs I use, although I use Pages where I would used to use Publisher. Word for Mac seems more versatile then the Windows version.
Excel is still Excel and runs rings around Numbers. Keynote over Powerpoint. But what I really use the most is Entourage (the Outlook for Mac).

Overall Office 2008 for Mac kills Office 2007 for Windows and is much easier to use (this is probably why). iWork is pretty good as a basic package for most things, but Office is definitely the winner. Good value if you can get a Student Discount Package.
 
...open office seems to work well for my iMac I just got and on my winXP machines... my fall back is my MS Office 2000 SBE for the winXP machines and VMFusion...

I was thinking of getting iWork 09 for $65 shipped, am I just wasting $$ when I already have the other software?

Or I could get the "military" appreciation editions of MS Office 2003 or 2007 at the base PX for $50 and no shipping?

Recommendations please.
 
Is anyone using Parallels or VMware Fusion and using the integrated desktop and using the Windows version of Office 2007?
 
I've been using Office for Win since version 6, then 97, xp, 203 and 2007. My main uses are Word, Excel, with several VBA macros, then Power Point. Once migrated to mac, about an year ago, I bought Office 2004 because Office 2008 does nt have macro support and it's thus a dead lane for me.
Office 2004, if compared with Office xp or 2003, is sluggish, crashes a lot. Power point does not make a great job with previous imported files because it often lacks of capability to keep images, imported tables and drafts, etc. Excel 2004 has VBA macro support, although it's quite unstable, and often it does not have 100% functionality.
iWork is really stable, although Numbers is useless. Keynote is a good piece of software and Pages is OK. Worth the price? Don't know.
NeoOffice is the one that's worth a try to me. It's free, it has a great word processor, with almost nothing to ask to Word. It can import Word files, also share reviews by means of the Track changes funcions. The other programs included, worksheet and graphics and presentation, are fair (unless you need more functions).
 
miles01110 said:
What kind of computer do you have? 2004 via Rosetta is horrendously slow on Intel Macs.
Click to expand...

Powerbook G4, Powermac G5, iMac G5, iMac Intel Core2 duo. Even on Intel, 2004 launches faster and seems to be overall "snappier", although the difference is more pronounced on PPC machines. I haven't tried our MacPros because we only have Office 08 on them and no 04.

However, Windows Office 2007 (and especially 2003) leaves all Mac's Offices in the dust when it comes to speed, even on Windows boxes that are older than the Macs we use by about a year.
 
I use both Office 2008 for Mac, and iWork 09. I find that they each have their pro's and con's. Overall I like using Office and after getting used to it I like it better than 07 for Windows.
 
Is Office 08 for mac on par with Office 07 for pc as far as formatting goes? You know sending one document from one version to the other without loosing the format (useful for resumes, reports and all)?
 
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