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Microsoft Unveils Mac Office 2008 Packages, Pricing
- Thread starter Mr. Dee
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Hopefully this version will be able to math better than Excel 2007!
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/09/24/2339203.shtml
Maybe you know about it and don't want it for some reason, but NeoOffice is an Aqua (read: No X11) port of Open Office
You lose X11, you gain quite a bit of Java. It is still slow, although not too shabby looking, particularly compared with the official port. Most of all though, it is too unstable for serious work. I tried opening a ginormous, but straightforward spreadsheet in Calc today. No VBA or other nasties like embedded comments or audit links activated. Calc died inelegantly. Three times. Excel 2004 handled said spreadsheet with alacrity. This on a machine with 4GB of memory and no other apps running at the time. NeoOffice has no excuses.
To all the others bleating about the lack of Exchange support with the cheapie edition, take a gander at the Windows Student and Home release. Notice something there? Like no Outlook whatsoever? That should have given you a really big clue.
A tad unfair. Nadyne from the MBU was here and said the actual reason was that porting VBA from PPC to Intel was trickier than was anticipated. The decision was made to drop it rather than delay the Intel port still further. Let's hope it reemerges in a later update, as Microsoft is big on backwards compatibility.
Will the "Home and Student Edition" include the stupid banner at the top that says "Non-commercial Use Only" like the new Windows version of Office does?
No it's not. It's pretty well known that Word chokes on large manuscripts. Try writing a 1000 page book on it, with chapter headings, notes, etc, and it just chokes. I don't mean just finding a 1000 page document on the net and seeing if it loads - I mean actually creating a large complex document from scratch.
Word chokes on all the cruft it adds on, the different version histories it keeps track of as you make changes, and god knows what else.
Macrumors forum policies are on the brink of dictatorship. Simply because I defended Bill Gates charitable contributions and Microsoft's market competitiveness, my post gets deleted for it. Talk about double standard over here. To the mod who did it, you are a definition of stupid, idiot of the 21st century and I hope the next time you log into your Mac it explodes in your face!
I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish 
here's the technology guarantee site to get the 2008 upgrade.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/go/promotions/
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/go/promotions/
I know I will end up purchasing it. (I'm an educator.) I do like iWork though. Keynote is clearly superior and pages is growing on me. I still like excel, but Numbers is becoming pretty cool.
Time will tell. I find myself clicking the iWork icons more and more to create, but so many attachments open with Microsoft.
Hmmmmm.
Time will tell. I find myself clicking the iWork icons more and more to create, but so many attachments open with Microsoft.
Hmmmmm.
The $79 iWork package has only 1 license indeed, but if you throw in $20 more, you'll get a 5-license family pack. However, on a general Microsoft scale the $149 package isn't bad at all.
Grammar and usage checking in Pages for one thing. The ability to adapt your paper to what ever format the teach requires you have it in(i.e. MLA, Chicago, etc).
Macrumors forum policies are on the brink of dictatorship. Simply because I defended Bill Gates charitable contributions and Microsoft's market competitiveness, my post gets deleted for it. Talk about double standard over here. To the mod who did it, you are a definition of stupid, idiot of the 21st century and I hope the next time you log into your Mac it explodes in your face!
Nicely said if this is true.
I just wrote a 60 page 1 st year report, on my MacBook and it [word] started to struggle. It isn't a universal binary, but I have to use it so I can use the 'comments' feature between my supervisor and I. Without that, my work might take longer...
I still have Entourage v.X
Yes. Just buy the Office 2004 upgrade now and then you qualify for a free copy Office 2008 (+$10 shipping). But you have to do this by March '08 or you WILL have to pay full boat.
No end notes was a problem for me. I also couldn't link tables and graphs from numbers, which eliminated dynamic updating. I have way too many of each to copy and paste and since this is a living document, it doesn't suit my needs.
Numbers chokes something fierce on large spreadsheets with lots of forumla's. It didn't have a problem importing them, but couldn't keep up with changes. I'll keep my eye on it, but for now I'll stick with Office 2004.
As I said, use the tool that's right for you. Grammar checking is the first thing I turn off in Word because:
1. It is often wrong (esp with "which" vs "that")
2. It often misses what mistakes I do make
3. When I use incorrect grammar that it "catches" it is almost always intentional
4. The green squigglies scattered across my page are annoying and distract me from reading and judging fluidity of phrasing, which is a more reliable test for grammar than Word's green squigglies.
I can't remember the last time Word's green squigglies alerted me to a real, unintentional grammar error.
This is in direct opposition to spell-check, which is almost always right (or, at least, a large enough percentage of the time for me to take a moment to consider it every time I see it, and which is supremely adaptable (it's far easier to add a word to a dictionary than to add a grammar rule or exception to the grammar checker).
That having been said, I believe Pages now has a grammar checker (not as-you-type, but something to run like we used to run spell checks).
On adapting to a stylesheet: Pages seems to do just fine with styles, for me. The one thing it won't do is take a pre-written/pre-styled paper, "import" a bunch of styles, and change all the existing styles to match the imported styles. Word does this well, so you can just change the underlying template for a paper and all the styles will change accordingly. In Pages doing a wholesale style changeover is about a five minute procedure instead of a five second procedure (I believe the only way to do this is that you copy text with the wanted style into your document, then redefine the style using that, for each copied style). If you do it often enough for that five minutes to matter, use the tool that makes it faster. Of course, it is possible that Pages has a way to do this which I haven't run across simply because I've never had to do this
I think when I buy my new iMac, I'll also get the Home edition of MS Office for it. At that price it's good to have at least one copy of the real deal. But I'll keep using Office X and NeoOffice on my other Macs.
My plan is to wait and see what all this "ribbon" hooey is all about.
Office 2004 works for now.
Office 2004 works for now.
Use Office 2007 or take a class on it.
I'm a rather seasoned user of Office 2003 and I just love the ribbon.
Some truths about Office Mac
Microsoft is careful to say that the Office for the Mac doesn't have a ribbon like the Windows version does. But it does have something ribbon-like. I hate the Window's Office ribbon because I can't figure out how to use the features that aren't on the ribbon and the menus are now gone. But that's Windows Office, not Mac Office.
Mac Office's new toolbars are a great improvement over previous Mac versions and way better than the ribbon in the Windows version. And the menus still exist on the Mac version.
What is Exchange? Exchange is, at its most basic, an email server for corporate and enterprise use. (It does way more than just email.) You may be more familiar with the name Outlook. For the purposes of this thread you can substitute the name Outlook for Exchange. Entourage is the Mac analog of Outlook. (Its an analog, not an equivalent. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses.)
Communicator is the name of the Windows client for Microsoft's corporate instant messaging server. (The server is called Office Communications Server.) Mac Messenger is the name of the Mac client for this server.
I see that someone else finally addressed this, but I'll state it again. Office 2007 Home and Student for Windows also does not include Outlook (AKA Exchange support.) Look at this link to see what it does have. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101674081033.aspx The real difference between Home and Student on the two platforms is that the Windows version includes One Note. Otherwise the two packages contain the same programs.
Yes, Office 2008 for the Mac can save in .DOC format as well as the new .DOCX format.
Yes, Entourage is greatly improved, but I'm sure there will still be some nay-sayers. Remember that the guys at Microsoft who are writing Entourage have to use it to get their email while at work. They know all of your pain points.
Expression Media is not a consumer application. Its a Digital Asset Management application that was first written on the Mac. Its very powerful yet has a simple UI.
I have used Silverlight on my Mac. I have not had any problems, but then again there isn't a whole lot of Silverlight content out there.
And finally, the new version of Mac Office will not touch the VBA macros in your existing documents, nor in documents you receive from Windows users. The new Mac Office will simply ignore them.
Microsoft is careful to say that the Office for the Mac doesn't have a ribbon like the Windows version does. But it does have something ribbon-like. I hate the Window's Office ribbon because I can't figure out how to use the features that aren't on the ribbon and the menus are now gone. But that's Windows Office, not Mac Office.
Mac Office's new toolbars are a great improvement over previous Mac versions and way better than the ribbon in the Windows version. And the menus still exist on the Mac version.
What is Exchange? Exchange is, at its most basic, an email server for corporate and enterprise use. (It does way more than just email.) You may be more familiar with the name Outlook. For the purposes of this thread you can substitute the name Outlook for Exchange. Entourage is the Mac analog of Outlook. (Its an analog, not an equivalent. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses.)
Communicator is the name of the Windows client for Microsoft's corporate instant messaging server. (The server is called Office Communications Server.) Mac Messenger is the name of the Mac client for this server.
I see that someone else finally addressed this, but I'll state it again. Office 2007 Home and Student for Windows also does not include Outlook (AKA Exchange support.) Look at this link to see what it does have. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101674081033.aspx The real difference between Home and Student on the two platforms is that the Windows version includes One Note. Otherwise the two packages contain the same programs.
Yes, Office 2008 for the Mac can save in .DOC format as well as the new .DOCX format.
Yes, Entourage is greatly improved, but I'm sure there will still be some nay-sayers. Remember that the guys at Microsoft who are writing Entourage have to use it to get their email while at work. They know all of your pain points.
Expression Media is not a consumer application. Its a Digital Asset Management application that was first written on the Mac. Its very powerful yet has a simple UI.
I have used Silverlight on my Mac. I have not had any problems, but then again there isn't a whole lot of Silverlight content out there.
And finally, the new version of Mac Office will not touch the VBA macros in your existing documents, nor in documents you receive from Windows users. The new Mac Office will simply ignore them.
really?
do they really think people are ok with paying $400-$500 for microsoft office? its not the 1990's anymore. there are plenty of other good office products that read and write .doc files. they must be trying to offset the losses they will most definatly experience due to piracy.
do they really think people are ok with paying $400-$500 for microsoft office? its not the 1990's anymore. there are plenty of other good office products that read and write .doc files. they must be trying to offset the losses they will most definatly experience due to piracy.
$149 for Home & Student with 3-licenses.
Not to mention university pricing as well. Office 2004 for $12 x masses of college students.
Use Office 2007 or take a class on it.
I'm a rather seasoned user of Office 2003 and I just love the ribbon.
Fair enough, I'll give it a good shake, but I don't like having to relearn an interface from scratch unless there's a darned good reason for it. If this is just a ploy to force everyone's hand, then forget it.
Yet in 13 years, no MS-Access port
I was unaware as to the claimed reasoning behind why it hasn't happened.
Nor do I know Nadyne from the MBU or how well her intentions may be.
The problem is that they've only had 13 years to try to port MS-Access, but that hasn't happened.
As such, I am nevertheless obigated to be of the firm opinon that VB on the Mac is utterly "gone for good". Given the past history, not even a written-in-Bill's-blood "money back" Guarentee that VB is going to be restored on a free x.1 release within y months would personally convince me otherwise.
-hh
I was unaware as to the claimed reasoning behind why it hasn't happened.
Nor do I know Nadyne from the MBU or how well her intentions may be.
The problem is that they've only had 13 years to try to port MS-Access, but that hasn't happened.
As such, I am nevertheless obigated to be of the firm opinon that VB on the Mac is utterly "gone for good". Given the past history, not even a written-in-Bill's-blood "money back" Guarentee that VB is going to be restored on a free x.1 release within y months would personally convince me otherwise.
-hh