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I have no trouble with the speed of Excel, but Word is painfully slow.

I have some reference documents in Word format, and I open them and print them to PDF to make myself copies that open much faster. It's rather silly to have an application that you actively work to avoid launching, but that's how it is. Maybe, just maybe, I won't have to do that any more.
 
No worries mate, Snow Leopard's on it's way. It will fully support MS Exchange right through Apple's mail and Calendar and you won't be slave to Entourage. :)

Too bad Mail get crippled with a few thousand messages. I am hoping that Snow Leopard does indeed fix this.
 
Office 2008 SP2 Sounds like a useful update. At least it may launch faster now.

As for the Spaces non-compatibility issue, forget about Mac BU ever fixing it. Just assign Office to every space.

Or switch to LaTeX, which I am contemplating, after going through document-corruption hell trying to write a 125-page dissertation... :(

Anyone had good luck with LyX?

Lyx is great and getting better with every release.

Just understand that it is not plain Latex what your are writing. If you have any specific layout requirement it might be better to do it directly in Latex.
However you can have a good start with Lyx and switch to plain Latex later...
 
I don't care how fast it is, I'm never installing that damn thing after trying out the trial version. Just acquiring and installing it was the most complicated and verbose thing I've ever seen. It was like a parody on a parody on Microsoft. I sat there clicking through one ridiculous prompt after another screaming "I JUST WANT TO TRY IT OUT!!! AND I BET YOU WANT TO SELL IT TO ME!!"

FFS, a trial version is something you should be able to just download without having to fill out a goddamn form asking for your shoe size, weight and political affiliations.

Anyway, I've given up and faced the fact that the only way to work with spreadsheets is to use Office on Windows. Office:Mac is garbage and iWork is a toy. Numbers and Pages are supposed to be able to import MS Office documents but that's just a bunch of horse puckey. It gets formulas wrong, it gets layout wrong, and cross-embedding isn't implemented. In Office on Windows you can embed Excel data in Word documents and retain editability. If you load a Word doc with embedded Excel data into Pages, it turns the Excel bits into effing bitmaps.
 
Wait what? Spaces is broken with 2008? I need to read about known issues before I install.

Spaces has issues with any Carbon app. It's most obvious with Office 2008 because we use windows more extensively than other apps do, and because we have lots of users who are vocal about it. :)

Apple made several improvements to Spaces in 10.5.7, which fixed many of the remaining issues with it.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
Hmm, does this make the difference between the Mac and PC versions any larger or smaller do you think? I can get either version for free through my college... and I don't know which to download... Office 2008 for Mac or the PC version and run it through Boot Camp. Thoughts?
 
Hmm, does this make the difference between the Mac and PC versions any larger or smaller do you think? I can get either version for free through my college... and I don't know which to download... Office 2008 for Mac or the PC version and run it through Boot Camp. Thoughts?

How about both?

I usually like to run natively on the Mac (least disrupting workflow), however I also sometimes need to use the Windows version because of some misbehaving document...
 
Does anyone have any educated guesses on when the next MS Office for Mac will come out? Late 2009? Early 2010? Late 2010? Later?
Let's see...

Office:mac 2001
Office:mac 2004
Office:mac 2008

You do the math.
 
Let's see...

Office:mac 2001
Office:mac 2004
Office:mac 2008

You do the math.

Unnecessary sarcasm. Also, you basically just told me they don't really have a pattern. 3 years than 4 years. Is it going to 5? 2? 3? 4? Thanks for the help!

Assuming there is a Mac Office a year after the Windows version look for it in 2011...

Thanks for an honest and helpful answer. Now, is there any chance MS will release Office 10 (for Windows) at the same time as the Mac Version?

I know the answer is probably no, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Also, Arn's article did say, "mid-life update", early-mid 2008 -> mid 2009 = "mid-life", mid-late 2010 = full life?
 
Wonder if it will make those annoying certificate messages go away. I've gone away from Entourage completely at work via Exchange. I use Outlook webmail because I'm constantly getting told my certificate is no good and then getting booted. :(

Most likly your IT guy needs to install a cert on the Exchange server. They cost something like $20 from places like godaddy.com.

In any case, certificate errors are not an Entourage problem, they are system/network configuration problem.

You are probably better off with webmail though. Entourage isn't very good. Esp. if you use Outlook a lot and know everything it should do but doesn't.
 
We did. :)

Regards,
Nadyne.
Hi, Nadyne. Despite what people may say about the Microsoft/Apple rivalry, it's great that MacBU still cares about the OS X platform. The new Sharepoint integration should be immensely useful to me.

I was hoping though that you would clarify the Office 2004 support issue since I still use it alongside Office 2008 for VBA support.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

Microsoft will offer Mainstream Support for either a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability, or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer.
Microsoft's support policy is that mainstream support be offered for products for 2 years after the successor is released. In this case, Office 2008 was released on March 12, 2008 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=12853) yet Office 2004 will retire on November 13, 2009 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2490). According to Microsoft's support policy, Office 2004 should remain in mainstream support until March 13, 2010. Is there a reason why Microsoft's Lifecycle Policy is not being followed for Office 2004?
 
Does this update allow me to get rid of the stupid real estate-eating gallery bar? That, the slow-as-molasses speed, and the Spaces issue are the reasons I switched to iWork. I'm guessing this update fixes 0 of them. Even if Word boots up 50% faster, Pages will still beat it.
 
Hi, Nadyna. Despite what people may say about the Microsoft/Apple rivalry, it's great that MacBU still cares about the OS X platform. The new Sharepoint integration should be immensely useful to me.

I was hoping though that you would clarify the Office 2004 support issue since I still use it alongside Office 2008 for VBA support.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy


Microsoft's support policy is that mainstream support be offered for products for 2 years after the successor is released. In this case, Office 2008 was released on March 12, 2008 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=12853) yet Office 2004 will retire on November 13, 2009 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2490). According to Microsoft's support policy, Office 2004 should remain in mainstream support until March 13, 2010. Is there a reason why Microsoft's Lifecycle Policy is not being followed for Office 2004?
It looks like it falls under whichever is longer. 5 years is longer than 2. ;)
 
Spaces has issues with any Carbon app. It's most obvious with Office 2008 because we use windows more extensively than other apps do, and because we have lots of users who are vocal about it. :)

Apple made several improvements to Spaces in 10.5.7, which fixed many of the remaining issues with it.

Regards,
Nadyne.

I read somewhere (can't find it now) that it was an Apple bug related to some programs (carbon) that can hide their document windows when not active. Microsoft worked out a workaround, but it was complicated and risked breaking other things, and itself would break when Apple fixed their code.

Overall, I have to say that Word 2008 is the best version of Word on either platform that I have used. I use Word 2007 on a PC at work and it is a bear.
 
Does this update allow me to get rid of the stupid real estate-eating gallery bar? That, the slow-as-molasses speed, and the Spaces issue are the reasons I switched to iWork. I'm guessing this update fixes 0 of them. Even if Word boots up 50% faster, Pages will still beat it.

It's easy to turn the gallery bar off.
 
That is a good news that we'll see later after trying out. Unfurtunatly, stuck with mac office with his slow speed only because iwork09 can't compete with mac office on many situations/features
 
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