Office for Mac 2011 Now Available

[macintoshtoffy]

Our small office (3 people, 4 macs) works well since 4 years on iWork. Spreadsheet, Word processing and presentation are all used intensively and when needed shared with clients in pdf format or printed.

We use hosted MS Exchange which works a charm on Snow Leopard.

It is really a matter of what you are used to, and I fully understand people that are too busy to start using new uncomfortable software to get basic office work done - but iWork is not inferior to Ms Office in a sense that matters to most people in most businesses. The integration across Apple applications alone makes for a great workflow.

But 3 people in an office is microscopic when compared to large customers who have large amounts of back end processing that hook into Microsoft Office and the various middleware offerings that Microsoft has. If it were as simply as using iWork then everyone would do it but most peoples work flow is a little more complex than the random letter or report.

 

[donstenk]

large amounts of back end processing that hook into Microsoft Office and the various middleware offerings that Microsoft has.

Clearly, but those companies are not your typical Mac user base at all to begin with.

The point I am making is that where the Mac excels is the small business or soho environment where there is no budget for the system administrators required to keep a couple of PC's going without problems. In such an environment it is very easy to let go of MS products entirely, and my experience shows that it makes for a very easy computing life with hardly any attention required to keep things functioning smoothly - quite the opposite from before we made the switch four years ago.

Many of todays small companies and startups will be tomorrow's medium to large companies and this is the way Apple (and Linux) are making inroads into corporate settings. Corporations set in Microsoft's ways since the eighties are much better sticking to it. Having said all that - data exchange today based on ODMC, XML and SOAP actually works equally well with other office suites, but the army of MCSE's around will tend stick with what they know - and for good reason.

I looked at the new MS Office suite for curiosity, installed it, played with it - and could not be bothered putting effort into adjusting to it. Is it a market standard? Yes, but not in my shop.

iWork (09 !) is not broken and does not get upgraded or replaced by mso.

I don't fix what is not broken, and that is my advice to all.

Dennis.

 

[jimmyjoemccrow]

Clearly, but those companies are not your typical Mac user base at all to begin with.

The point I am making is that where the Mac excels is the small business or soho environment where there is no budget for the system administrators required to keep a couple of PC's going without problems. In such an environment it is very easy to let go of MS products entirely, and my experience shows that it makes for a very easy computing life with hardly any attention required to keep things functioning smoothly - quite the opposite from before we made the switch four years ago.

Many of todays small companies and startups will be tomorrow's medium to large companies and this is the way Apple (and Linux) are making inroads into corporate settings. Corporations set in Microsoft's ways since the eighties are much better sticking to it. Having said all that - data exchange today based on ODMC, XML and SOAP actually works equally well with other office suites, but the army of MCSE's around will tend stick with what they know - and for good reason.

I looked at the new MS Office suite for curiosity, installed it, played with it - and could not be bothered putting effort into adjusting to it. Is it a market standard? Yes, but not in my shop.

iWork (09 !) is not broken and does not get upgraded or replaced by mso.

I don't fix what is not broken, and that is my advice to all.

Dennis.

Stop perpetuating this crap that PCs are hard to maintain, or that using alternatives removes the need for Office entirely. Yes, you can get by with other products, but if someone sends you a document saved in a file format produced in the latest Office suite you may not be able to open it at all, or will have layout errors. Worse, if you are required to edit that document and have to save it, you risk making changes that could ruin the original document.

I am all for open standards and people using file formats that work cross platform, but in practice people go with what they know which is usually Office, or worse still Works. It requires a good deal of co-operation and education to remove the need for Office entirely.

 

[donstenk]

Stop perpetuating this crap that PCs are hard to maintain, or that using alternatives removes the need for Office entirely.

I found PC's hard to maintain and I found that using Apple computers in my small business removed the need for MS Office, so it is not crap but a real life situation.

Having worked in the IT industry since the mid 90's and having been part of a team that deployed and maintained 60.000 NT, W2K, and later XP workstations I know exactly what I am talking about and I will also volunteer the information that all NT based workstations perform well when locked down and managed well by a competent IT department.

For home or small office use it is a completely different ballgame where the end user is taken advantage off by predatory anti-virus, anti-spyware and generic bad software that slows computers down to a crawl, not to mention vulnerable IE browser. All in all you really need to know what you are doing.

Compare that to Apple computers, iPhones and iPads: they are more like a TV in that you switch it on, use it, and switch it off. You get the odd update, but otherwise there is nothing to worry about, no maintenance required. I still use a four year old MacBook without any problems whatsoever (and not because of lack of budget but because I try not to be over-consume). Wonderful. I also look forward to the Mac App Store as will make it make easier to install software. A bit like the software repositories on Linux.

Dennis.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

Clearly, but those companies are not your typical Mac user base at all to begin with.

The point I am making is that where the Mac excels is the small business or soho environment where there is no budget for the system administrators required to keep a couple of PC's going without problems. In such an environment it is very easy to let go of MS products entirely, and my experience shows that it makes for a very easy computing life with hardly any attention required to keep things functioning smoothly - quite the opposite from before we made the switch four years ago.

Many of todays small companies and startups will be tomorrow's medium to large companies and this is the way Apple (and Linux) are making inroads into corporate settings. Corporations set in Microsoft's ways since the eighties are much better sticking to it. Having said all that - data exchange today based on ODMC, XML and SOAP actually works equally well with other office suites, but the army of MCSE's around will tend stick with what they know - and for good reason.

I looked at the new MS Office suite for curiosity, installed it, played with it - and could not be bothered putting effort into adjusting to it. Is it a market standard? Yes, but not in my shop.

iWork (09 !) is not broken and does not get upgraded or replaced by mso.

I don't fix what is not broken, and that is my advice to all.

For me iWork is around 90% of the way there but the lack of integrated bibliographical functionality, the horrible templates, lack of round trip support for Microsoft formats etc. is what makes Microsoft Office the option over using Microsoft Office.

Stop perpetuating this crap that PCs are hard to maintain, or that using alternatives removes the need for Office entirely. Yes, you can get by with other products, but if someone sends you a document saved in a file format produced in the latest Office suite you may not be able to open it at all, or will have layout errors. Worse, if you are required to edit that document and have to save it, you risk making changes that could ruin the original document.

I am all for open standards and people using file formats that work cross platform, but in practice people go with what they know which is usually Office, or worse still Works. It requires a good deal of co-operation and education to remove the need for Office entirely.

Agreed; hence the reason I use Microsoft Office 2011 over iWork - I avoid Outlook like the plague because it is very much 1.0 software but Word, Excel and PowerPoint cannot be beaten especially when one considers no man is an island. Even when I am not at university I still receive a considerable amount of documents and slide slow presentations that need to be supported fully and the alternatives simply aren't delivering what one needs by way of compatibility.

As for PC's running Windows - if your employees are being infected then they need to be given a pink slip rather than Microsoft being blamed because the said employee can't get their act together.

 

[donstenk]

As for PC's running Windows - if your employees are being infected then they need to be given a pink slip .

It was my pc and wife's that got infected in a distant past when we didn't have Macs or employees ;-)

 

[mfuggle]

Most know already, but Outlook only sync's contacts with Isync, so if you currently use Entourage now and have an I-device using Isync then you'll lose calendar syncing. I'm waiting to update.

I have looked at it and it is nice, but can't afford to lose calendar syncing to my ipod.

I have been using Thunderbird synced to Google Calendars and Contacts for some time and it works really well. I purchased Office Mac 2011 solely for Outlook but it is a useless piece of software for me since without the ability to sync with Google Calendars and Contacts it is unworkable as far as I am concerned. It has been a total waste on my money.

 

[smallaffair]

No OneNote

Does office 2011 have Onenote..?

It does not but some people like the Notebook view in Word. It depends on what you use OneNote for. If you want multiple color coded tabs along the top and side panel, Word 2011 for Mac does not offer that.

I have been trying all different trial versions of programs that seem similar to OneNote, but I have not yet found the tab feature. People say Circus Ponies Notebook is a lot like OneNote, and I like Mac Journal, but neither have the tabs.

 

[MooneyFlyer]

It does not but some people like the Notebook view in Word. It depends on what you use OneNote for. If you want multiple color coded tabs along the top and side panel, Word 2011 for Mac does not offer that.

I have been trying all different trial versions of programs that seem similar to OneNote, but I have not yet found the tab feature. People say Circus Ponies Notebook is a lot like OneNote, and I like Mac Journal, but neither have the tabs.

Back in my PC days I loved OneNote and had a hard time finding something comparable for my Mac. I chose and still use MacJournal. However, in the last few weeks I've started using Evernote. It doesn't have tabs either but it set up nicely for the widescreen format and is free.. (also sync's with an iOS device if you'd like). There are upgrade options to a service fee for a year that I'm not all that interested in but this seems to be a reasonable option.