office 2008 question

[abs9986]

Hey all,

I am new to these forums and new to Macs. I've been a pc user my whole life and made the switch because I really liked the new alu macbook. Anyways, so far the experience has been fine...I really like osx. I guess the first question I have is...do you have any recommendations of things to do when you first get a mac. Like important apps to get or certain settings that should be changed?

My other questions is: I got a free copy of office 2008 which I am currently using. So far I'm pretty unhappy with the program. It runs pretty slow compared to office 2007 which was on my pc that is 4 years old. I have already deleted the unnecessary fonts. Also, I just hate the UI. I love office 2007...the ribbon menu, once gotten used to is an amazing productivity tool that has everything one needs in different tabs. Is there any way to configure office 2008 to mimic more or a ribbon menu set up?

Also, I have read posts comparing office programs. My perspective is: I already have office 2008 which I got for free. So is it worth going with iwork or open/neo office to have a faster, better UI program?

Thanks for your replies
~Alex

 

[ceezy3000]

well first of all turn on the built in firewall,there are no viruses but there are trojans, go to system prefernces> security>firewall>click on allow essential services only(da middle one) the click on advanced and enable stealth mode, and yes iwork 09 is way better, so just get the free trial and see how you nlike it

 

[DiSFLyLaTiNa]

i'm having the same problem. i don't like 2008 as much as i liked 2007. it's really confusing actually!!! but i guess its fine, i got a free copy too so i don't have much to complain about right?

i tried iWork 09 but i couldn't get used to taking notes on there in outline form. it was so ODD!

 

[skaertus]

Office 2008 for Mac is really a crap piece of software. It is bloated, it is still written in Carbon, lacks some of the Windows features (notably Macro support) and even crashes sometimes.

Word 2008 uses 180 MB of memory when running on my Mac. Word 2007 uses about 30 MB when running on Windows, and both have a similar set of features. Microsoft should be ashamed of this product.

I gave up Office 2008. Fortunately, I don't use lots of spreadsheets, so I won't miss Excel, which is the only non-replaceable product in Office 2008. Keynote is actually much better than PowerPoint. And Word can be replaced by a lot of MacOS software, depending on what you want (Pages for layout-driven word processing, Nisus Writer Pro for a general purpose word processor, Mellel for long and complex documents, Scrivener for creative writing, Bean for simple and quick texts, etc.).

 

[abs9986]

not only does word take up alot of memory, but it runs pretty slow on my brand new machine...like if I switch to another window then back and try to type, there is a kind of lag or pause....this never happened in any other version of word for the pc...at least not for 10 years, lol.

I've heard alot about open and neo office. By the way, which one are people using nowadays? Is open office worth using...remember I already have office 08. Will open/neo office run better on the mac?

 

[skaertus]

not only does word take up alot of memory, but it runs pretty slow on my brand new machine...like if I switch to another window then back and try to type, there is a kind of lag or pause....this never happened in any other version of word for the pc...at least not for 10 years, lol.

I've heard alot about open and neo office. By the way, which one are people using nowadays? Is open office worth using...remember I already have office 08. Will open/neo office run better on the mac?

Office 2008 is really very slow and sluggish compared to Office 2007 for Windows. Probably a lot of bad code. In addition, Office 2008 doesn't integrate well with Spaces (there is a very annoying bug, actually, where the Office window keeps changing Spaces).

I've never tried Neo Office, since it is an adapted OpenOffice.org for the Aqua interface, developed at the time OpenOffice.org had to run in X11 (i.e., prior to version 3.0). Neo Office is a few versions behind OpenOffice.org. The only reason I see for using Neo Office now is to use it on PowerPC machines, since OpenOffice.org 3.0 requires an Intel processor.

Perhaps you should give OpenOffice.org 3.0 a run, as it won't cost you a penny. There are lots of people in the Windows environment using OpenOffice.org.

Don't expect it to be wonderful: it lacks some features and it is heavy and not much Mac-like. But it still uses less memory than Microsoft Office and is getting a little better with every version (which is released each 6 months). Microsoft Office for Mac, on the other hand, is always a year behind its Windows counterpart (does Microsoft make Office for Mac so slow, sluggish and late on purpose?).

Why don't you also try iWork?

 

[abs9986]

so no one knows if office 08 can be configured to resemble office 07 with the ribbon menus? Or if the other office programs can resemble the ribbon menu?

 

[skaertus]

so no one knows if office 08 can be configured to resemble office 07 with the ribbon menus? Or if the other office programs can resemble the ribbon menu?

No. The ribbon menu is exclusive for Windows.

 

[tatman]

Excel 2008 Chart

Does anyone know how to make the x-axis of a graph horizontal and the y-axis vertical instead of the dumb default format (x-axis is vertical and y-axis is horizontal)? I tried to use the formatting palette and rotate it but it didn't work... Excel 2008 is by far the hardest one that I've used and some things are VERY questionable. Thanks for your help!