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Microsoft Releases Free Office 2008 Trial and Updates for Office 2008 and 2004

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Microsoft today announced that it is now offering free, 30-day trial downloads of Office 2008 for users located in the United States.
Many of us like to try something before we decide to buy. And with today's launch of the downloadable Office 2008 for Mac Trial, MacBU is giving our customers the option of trying out Office 2008 for 30 days: fully functional, no strings attached. It runs side-by-side with earlier versions of Office, and when your 30 days is up, you have the choice to either purchase a copy from your local Apple retailer or buy a product key from Mactopia online and be up and running without reinstalling.
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Microsoft has also released updates to its Office 2008 and Office 2004 application suites. According to a related security bulletin, Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 12.1.7 Update and Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 11.5.4 Update patch several vulnerabilities that could be exploited by maliciously crafted Excel files.

Article Link: Microsoft Releases Free Office 2008 Trial and Updates for Office 2008 and 2004
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/04/14/microsoft-releases-free-office-2008-trial-and-updates-for-office-2008-and-2004/
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This is nice. I prefer to try it before I buy it. I think that it is a little late in the game though. Office 2008 has been out for a long time now.
 
nadyne said:
The Spaces issue isn't ours to solve. It's Apple's. We've shown them our code and they can't suggest a complete fix for it. For the deep gory technical details of the problem, check out this blog post from one of our senior developers: risks and rewards.

Regards,
Nadyne.
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Thanks for the details. It's just a bit strange that every other program on my Mac works perfectly fine (including Office 2004).

"However, changing our windowing system to not use Carbon Window Groups entails a complete rewrite, and is not something we can feasibly do in a bug-fix release."

I think MSFT should have looked into rewriting that code before upping it to 2008 as many people I know are switching to iWork on their Macs (including myself sadly, though it's happening very gradually right now)
 
The 30 day free trial is a REALLY good idea. I have & use Office 2004 which works fine for my needs, but I will certainly give the 2008 version a free look and see if it sells me and if it doesn't, no loss. I like the approach here.

nadyne said:
The Spaces issue isn't ours to solve. It's Apple's. We've shown them our code and they can't suggest a complete fix for it. For the deep gory technical details of the problem, check out this blog post from one of our senior developers: risks and rewards.

Regards,
Nadyne.
Click to expand...

Nadyne, I wish I had a nickel for every time I have seen you have to post this explanation regarding the Spaces issues because some folks still don't get it.... I cannot even imagine how frustrating it is on your end.
 
duky said:
Thanks for the details. It's just a bit strange that every other program on my Mac works perfectly fine (including Office 2004).

"However, changing our windowing system to not use Carbon Window Groups entails a complete rewrite, and is not something we can feasibly do in a bug-fix release."

I think MSFT should have looked into rewriting that code before upping it to 2008 as many people I know are switching to iWork on their Macs (including myself sadly, though it's happening very gradually right now)
Click to expand...

Agree with duky. All this does is push a Mac base accustomed to a certain UI towards solutions that conform to those expectations. And hey, maybe a code rewrite isn't a bad thing...then maybe it wouldn't take 10 bounces for Word to open and I wouldn't have to wonder why it's faster to emulate 2007 in Win7 beta via VMWare. Or is that the point? :eek:
 
duky said:
Thanks for the details. It's just a bit strange that every other program on my Mac works perfectly fine (including Office 2004).
Click to expand...

We're not the only app that has the problem. Any Carbon app that uses Window Groups has the same issue. Our use of Window Groups is more extensive than many other applications, and our apps are used by lots of people, so the problem is the most obvious for us. :(

I think MSFT should have looked into rewriting that code before upping it to 2008 as many people I know are switching to iWork on their Macs (including myself sadly, though it's happening very gradually right now)
Click to expand...

Leopard was released at the end of October 2007, and Office 2008 was released two months later. Apple was aware of the problem, and we were aware of the problem. We were working closely with Apple to try to figure out exactly what each of us could do to try to fix it.

There have been some improvements, both in subsequent updates to Office 2008 and Leopard. We've got a great relationship with Apple, and they know how important this is to those users who use Spaces, so we continue to try to make this better. I'm a Spaces user myself, and getting this fixed would make a huge difference to me too.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
markfc said:
Ha Ha, Yeah it's "Apples" fault.... Vista is probably Apple's fault too...
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Microsoft has done a lot of crappy things, but we (the Apple community) are often too quick to heap blame on them for things that really aren't their fault.

It makes us sound like snobs and ultimately hurts Mac.

Thanks for that info Nadyne, I wasn't aware of it! - But I don't really uses spaces so I haven't ran into the bug.
 
Nice.

And, hey, let's not mindlessly bash MS Mac Business Unit here.
If they are willing to show up here and talk to us, let's be nice -- it will help them listen to us. :)

Also, er, well, I hate to do anything but bash MS, but I have both Office and iWork on my MBP, but day-to-day, I use Word. There's a reason for that.
 
Can anyone help me out here?

picture1ztm.png
 
I'm getting that exact same error!

Can't install as it says it can't find a suitable version?!
 
iSee said:
Also, er, well, I hate to do anything but bash MS, but I have both Office and iWork on my MBP, but day-to-day, I use Word. There's a reason for that.
Click to expand...

Me too. I do all of my word processing in Word 2008. I like Pages, but I found it isn't compatible enough and does too many random/annoying things, especially with page headers/footers and tables.

Excel I need for compatibility, but I much prefer the Numbers way of doing things now that I'm used to it. I use Numbers for my own stuff, Excel for customer-facing stuff.

Keynote beats PowerPoint hands down.

Anybody know how Exchange support is looking in the latest builds of Snow Leopard? It's one of the things Apple touted back when they announced it, but I've heard nothing since. Genuine Exchange support for Mail, iCal and Address Book would make me very happy!
 
If they would only fix the QTVR bug in PowerPoint 2008, where it crashed it all when you use a QTVR movie after initially using it.
 
nadyne said:
The Spaces issue isn't ours to solve. It's Apple's. We've shown them our code and they can't suggest a complete fix for it. For the deep gory technical details of the problem, check out this blog post from one of our senior developers: risks and rewards.

Regards,
Nadyne.
Click to expand...

Just a few points i would like to rase.

  1. When is open document format planned.
  2. Will we see performance improvements in load times be a key issue for the next version.
  3. When is a messenger public beta due for personal video chatting.
 
LOL, 158 MB to "patch several vulnerabilities that could be exploited by maliciously crafted Excel files."
 
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