Office 2004 vs. v.X - Worth the upgrade?

[papersushi]

Office 2004 may not be a big deal to English spoken world. It has complete Unicode support now. If your word files contain any Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters, it will show up correctly without installing any tird party unicode support patch, which is somethig you have to do on Offic V. X

 

[busasa]

interesting, so that's why i can't view any chinese characters in office v. x. Can you tell me where can i dl those unicode patches for the office v. x??

 

[AllieNeko]

I'm going to go against the crowd and say it's worth it for PowerPoint Presenter Tools if you use PowerPoint and have a PowerBook or PowerMac (dual monitor support needed to make it worthwhile) and also for the compatibility reports and improved PowerPoint graphics. I like it a lot better personally. PowerPoint is much improved, IMHO.

 

[ejb190]

Thanks markie!

PowerPoint is my main MS Office Application. I have found a lot of things I can do in XP that don't exist in Office X like motion paths and animation features that really make my life a bit easier. I was hoping that 2004 would bring the Mac version up to par with the PC version.

I haven't figured out why they made Word so darn bloated. It is like they are trying to combine all the features of Excel, Publisher, and FrontPage into one application and not doing any of it justice. Afterall, who seriously uses the web publication tools in Word?

 

[rendezvouscp]

As a student, I decided to update to Office 2004 because I saw the features and price to be worthwhile. The newest features that I use most frequently are the compatibility reports, the (what seems new) thesaurus (really helps for papers), the project center is nice, Unicode support, and a little bit more support for fractions (and that's just in Word). I don't know how fast your PB is, but it does seem a little bit smoother on G4's (at least at CompUSA on their iMacs). I haven't used Excel or PowerPoint extensively, but they seem to be nicer too as far as features goes. The whole suite seems a little bit more "complete." Depending on how much you use Office, I would suggest upgrading or not. If you use it every day, I would upgrade, but if you use it once in a while, I would suggest staying with v.X unless you have the extra cash and/or see the new features to be worth it.
–Chase

 

[discoforce]

Don't forget "Tech Guarantee"

For those considering an upgrade to 2004, if you bought v.X b/w Jan 6 & June 30 this year (only in US and Canada) you can upgrade for the price of shipping ($10 US), which was cheap enough for me to send away for it.

You'll need your receipt and box top. Hmm... sounds like I'm ordering a decoder ring

Now whether I install it or not depends on what I read and whether I need it to remain compatible with the PC folks I work with.

So the real question for me is should I "upgrade" to the professional version which includes Virtual PC ($129 US). I could theoretically use it to run my stats programs that only work on PCs... What do y'all think?