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Microsoft Office 2008 Update Brings Speed Increases and New Features

Cave Man said:
OK, got it and that seems to work. I wish MS would do what Apple does with Software Update - just role them all into one combo package.
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True, but MS has been doing a much better job about this than in years past.

I believe I correctly remember having to install dot release after dot release after dot release for Office 2004 after a clean install to get it up to date. The memory is so painful I've almost got it fully suppressed.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Developers actually like having hybrid versions (ex. there 32/64 bit applications on Leopard, running simultaneously). IE 64-bit takes 32-bit plugins. The gain you see is rather small, vs the amount of effort. To port from 32 to 64-bit takes tremendous amounts of work, especially for mainstream apps/suites like Office, Adobe CS, iLife, iWork. What do you gain? A few seconds faster launch time. Faster calculations and more memory streams for the >1% people that actually touch upon this every once in awhile.

64-bit calculations do not benefit over 32-bit. Processors are already calculating in 64-bit, but the applications limits it to 32-bit. My MBP addresses 4GB of memory which 32-bit processors can't. But my applications are 32-bit, which limits everything. PowerPoint's new video overlay features won't see a dramatic improvement whilst in 64-bit mode. And Excel is already good enough for most. Improving it to cater to the minority is not a good business model. Apple is a good example. Decades before, they were expensive machines. Nowadays, they are catering to the consumer market. Glossy glass screens, backlit keyboards, multi touch, etc.

A good example of 32-bit being already good enough is CS4 Photoshop. Photoshop is far more powerful and CPU-hungry than the entire suite of Office combined. Photoshop still runs pretty fast. While I see the performance gains in 64-bit, for an Office suite, it's simply not completely-necessary, especially if you want a few seconds faster launch time.
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Want to explain why my IE8 x64 won't work with 32bit Flash player?
Explain why my little snitch app won't work in 64bit SL?
Want to explain why Preferences Pane 32bit won't work without restarting System Prefs in 32bit?
Want to explain why 1Password won't work in Safari 64bit?

All of them are related to mixing 32bit stuff with 64bit stuff, they don't work.

64bit OS can handle 32bit and 64bit apps because they are isolated from each other and the OS provide the 32bit bubble for the 32bit apps.

So exactly what am I wrong about? Everything WILL (as a FACT) move toward 64bit in the near future. There's nothing to be right or wrong about. I never said it is necessary to move everything to 64bit, all i say it would be better to move everything to 64bit. Not necessary. Just better.

Also I never said that 64bit will be a huge gain in performance for all applications nor did i say it would be an easy work for developers. . All i mentioned was that I noticed a performance gain (not huge but noticable) between 64bit version of Office 2010 TP over 32bit. It is possible MS optimized the 64bit more than 32bit. Who knows, but the fact is Microsoft is doing a 64bit version of Office 2010, the most popular application in the world. If there are no gains, why develop a 64bit then as you said porting to 64bit is too complicated. Don't tell me that MS is big enough to do it, it is still more money for MS to spend on for little benefits.
 
I don't see any improvement in the launch times...am I doing something wrong?

How much faster exactly did your Word/PP/Excel launch?
 
vega07 said:
I don't see any improvement in the launch times...am I doing something wrong?

How much faster exactly did your Word/PP/Excel launch?
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You aren't doing anything wrong. Not everybody get the same performance gains. i don't know why. You may try doing a full reinstall but it may not work at all.

I'm on SSD, all the apps launched within one bounce.
 
vega07 said:
I don't see any improvement in the launch times...am I doing something wrong?

How much faster exactly did your Word/PP/Excel launch?
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for me on a SR MBP, on the second open after it has been stored in the ram, it loads in 1 bounce as opposed to 5-6 before. Not bad :)
 
LagunaSol said:
Agreed. I know the Mac BU tries to be "Mac-like," but generally fails. I'm not a huge fan of The Ribbon, but interface consistency between Windows and Mac versions of Office would be nice (since the Mac version interfaces aren't stellar either).
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We have a fine line to walk for the interface. For users who frequently use both WinOffice and Office:Mac, they're more likely to be interested in the same UI. For users who are primarily or exclusively Mac users, though, they strongly dislike consistency with a Windows UI, especially when you consider things like keyboard shortcuts.

More importantly, how about feature parity? To me the most frustrating thing is the ability to do something in, say PowerPoint 2007 but not be able to do the same thing in PowerPoint 2008. It's aggravating to try to figure out where the "missing features" are.
I swear Microsoft deliberately leaves features out of the Mac versions of their apps, even though the Mac versions come later. The Mac BU will deny this I'm sure, but there seems to be overwhelming evidence to counter their denials.
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I'm not sure how I could deny that. We make decisions about which features from WinOffice we'll pick up and which ones we won't.

Sometimes it's a technical decision. If something from WinOffice is tied closely to the Windows operating system, then the cost of us picking up that feature is very high, and possibly isn't something that we can contain in a single release.

Other times it's simply a resource decision. The WinOffice team is at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than we are, so it's impossible for us to do everything that they have. We have to prioritise features and figure out how they make sense for our Mac users.

Additionally, there are Mac-specific features that we want to implement so that we're a good Mac citizen. For example, we provide iPhoto integration so that you can more easily get to your pictures and include them in your documents. We also have great AppleScript support. Supporting these important Mac-specific technologies means that there is less time to pick up features from WinOffice.

It's always interesting to take part in these conversations. Given that we have millions of users, it's inevitable that there are diametrically opposing opinions about what we should do. :) We've got "be more like WinOffice" competing with "be a better Mac app", and we've also got "your applications are too bloated" competing with "I want all of the features from WinOffice (plus some extra Mac-specific features)". Barring making different versions of the applications, we're not going to make everyone happy.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
Is there any way to say in words how pathetic Microsoft is?

Argh, today I had to reinstall Office because this stupid upgrade somehow thought my serial number (which I've been using for a long time, no problem of course) was invalid. To top it off, I had to download a non-official one and call home to get the serial because my official copy was at home and I had to use it at work.

I lost a whole afternoon of work because of that.

I definitely hate Micro$oft.
 
dr. shdw said:
Wow..you're angry for updating something "illegal"..
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Erm, no.

I have a Volume Licence for Office 2008 from my university with a legitimate key, and now it's broken. This sucks, big time. I will get it working again, but it's a major inconvenience to go through the whole reinstall process when I need to analyse some data! Way to treat your customers.

I am sure others will be in a similar predicament. Don't update if you can't lay your hands on the key (as others have advised)!
 
jegra said:
Erm, no.

I have a Volume Licence for Office 2008 from my university with a legitimate key, and now it's broken. This sucks, big time. I will get it working again, but it's a major inconvenience to go through the whole reinstall process when I need to analyse some data! Way to treat your customers.

I am sure others will be in a similar predicament. Don't update if you can't lay your hands on the key (as others have advised)!
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What's broken again?

There's no need to do a full reinstall for the key. you can easily remove the key by deleting two files and a reboot. Entering the key should work from there.

You might have to go to MSDN or your VL site and request a new key.
 
jegra said:
Erm, no.

I have a Volume Licence for Office 2008 from my university with a legitimate key, and now it's broken. This sucks, big time. I will get it working again, but it's a major inconvenience to go through the whole reinstall process when I need to analyse some data! Way to treat your customers.

I am sure others will be in a similar predicament. Don't update if you can't lay your hands on the key (as others have advised)!
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I also have a VL for Office 2008 and it's fine. If the key still doesn't work after re-entering it, maybe you should ask your IT folks..

Also when I installed my copy of Office 2008, it didn't even ask for a key..it was built-in somehow.
 
jegra said:
Erm, no.

I have a Volume Licence for Office 2008 from my university with a legitimate key, and now it's broken. This sucks, big time. I will get it working again, but it's a major inconvenience to go through the whole reinstall process when I need to analyse some data! Way to treat your customers.

I am sure others will be in a similar predicament. Don't update if you can't lay your hands on the key (as others have advised)!
Click to expand...

I have the same issue. And since I'm not at Uni right now, I have no way of getting to the IT department. So basically I'm left to make a phone call...

"Hi, I'm Drew and I go to Drexel... can you give me the school's volume license key for Office 2008? Thanks...."

yeah, that'd go over real well.
 
It doesn't work (surprise, surprise)

It can't identify my Office 2008 installation.

Why doesn't this surprise me?

It's another piece of **** from Microsoft that's almost certainly not worth the time to troubleshoot.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I have the same issue. And since I'm not at Uni right now, I have no way of getting to the IT department. So basically I'm left to make a phone call...

"Hi, I'm Drew and I go to Drexel... can you give me the school's volume license key for Office 2008? Thanks...."

yeah, that'd go over real well.
Click to expand...

Haha ya that would certainly look a little suspicious. Maybe they will just ask for a student ID #? That would be legit enough...

This is certainly one thing that iWork has over MS Office. MAJOR props to Apple for being very trusting about licensing iWork (and OS X for that matter). In fact, that is part of the reason I actually do pay for much of Apple's software. Trust begets trust.

And when Microsoft makes you a) pay more for their office suite than for the entire OS you are running it on, and b) makes you go in and delete system files when THEIR update breaks legitimate keys, well, let me just say that piracy looks more appealing. Yes, it is STEALING, people tend to not mind as much when they are stealing from a company they see as "evil". Sure, their is the argument that "ok, you think they are evil, don't buy OR steal their software", but their is the problem that .doc and .docx (and their counterparts) are the UNIVERSAL STANDARD, and for work and/or school, you need software that WILL work with them, not maybe. When other pieces of software can't handle the formats or can't handle them well due to licensing fights, well, lets just say that it really does come down to buy or steal, and steal looks very attractive to good few people...

Sorry if most of that was a little off topic. I guess it is a bit on topic though since this update did have a major "feature" of breaking known pirated serials...
 
illegallydead said:
Haha ya that would certainly look a little suspicious. Maybe they will just ask for a student ID #? That would be legit enough...
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I'm hoping there will be an update on uni servers. otherwise I'll just get it from the other school I go to.... less hassle then dealing with Drexel's red tape.

From Drexel's IRT department...
http://www.drexel.edu/irt/services/comp_mark/software.html said:
Software is made available to you because Drexel University has purchased license coverage for the Software through Microsoft Campus Agreement Subscription Student Option effective October 1, 2007 through September 30, 2008.
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Maybe MS was just a little aggressive with disabling Drexel's key? That's gonna suck for all the OS X users over there...
 
mikes70mustang said:
I was hoping for VBA implementation, since they shafted us in 08. Excel is mucho useless for any stats.
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MS's Mac BU has stated that they are holding off on bringing back VBA support until Office 2011 or 2012 or whenever they release. One way or another, they will force you to pay to get back support for something that should have been in there to begin with or offered in an update once their programmers got used to Cocoa programming...
 
illegallydead said:
Haha ya that would certainly look a little suspicious. Maybe they will just ask for a student ID #? That would be legit enough...

This is certainly one thing that iWork has over MS Office. MAJOR props to Apple for being very trusting about licensing iWork (and OS X for that matter). In fact, that is part of the reason I actually do pay for much of Apple's software. Trust begets trust.

And when Microsoft makes you a) pay more for their office suite than for the entire OS you are running it on, and b) makes you go in and delete system files when THEIR update breaks legitimate keys, well, let me just say that piracy looks more appealing. Yes, it is STEALING, people tend to not mind as much when they are stealing from a company they see as "evil". Sure, their is the argument that "ok, you think they are evil, don't buy OR steal their software", but their is the problem that .doc and .docx (and their counterparts) are the UNIVERSAL STANDARD, and for work and/or school, you need software that WILL work with them, not maybe. When other pieces of software can't handle the formats or can't handle them well due to licensing fights, well, lets just say that it really does come down to buy or steal, and steal looks very attractive to good few people...

Sorry if most of that was a little off topic. I guess it is a bit on topic though since this update did have a major "feature" of breaking known pirated serials...
Click to expand...

Apple requires a serial for most of their expensive stuff, including one version of iWorks if I remember correctly, 08. You need a serial for Aperture, FCP, Server, etc. ;)

Also I'm surprised your school or whoever's gave you VL on a student/staff/faculty copy, they should give you your own unique key. The VL keys are usually slated for departments, etc.
 
jegra said:
Erm, no.

I have a Volume Licence for Office 2008 from my university with a legitimate key, and now it's broken. This sucks, big time. I will get it working again, but it's a major inconvenience to go through the whole reinstall process when I need to analyse some data! Way to treat your customers.

I am sure others will be in a similar predicament. Don't update if you can't lay your hands on the key (as others have advised)!
Click to expand...

I wonder if a student leaked the license onto the 'net and that caused MS to flag it as fraudulent.
 
Well, I just logged on to post my complaint but it looks like it's being discussed already. I have a 100% legal version of office on what I believe is a university issued volume license (I don't know if the product key is the same across the university - at any rate, it was purchased through the university at a heavily discounted price) but after the update it told me my product key was invalid. I had to go through and delete a few plist files and all is fine now. Still, it's an annoyance.
 
dr. shdw said:
Apple requires a serial for most of their expensive stuff, including one version of iWorks if I remember correctly, 08. You need a serial for Aperture, FCP, Server, etc. ;)

Also I'm surprised your school or whoever's gave you VL on a student/staff/faculty copy, they should give you your own unique key. The VL keys are usually slated for departments, etc.
Click to expand...

You need a serial number to register your iWork if you downloaded the trial version.

Retail copies of iWork or iLife do not require serial numbers.
 
MikhailT said:
You need a serial number to register your iWork if you downloaded the trial version.

Retail copies of iWork or iLife do not require serial numbers.
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Maybe your box is different but my iWork 08 retail box has a serial # inside..
 
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