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Should I Buy MS Office 04 (Students Edition)?

S

Steve Jobless

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 31, 2006
304
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My school is windows only and since i dont have a printer for my MBP I would be sending files back and forth between PCs and my MBP. I;m going with Office because I tried pages and dont like it and I would like to use excel for creating charts. My question is is it worth it? I have a copy for windows (2003) and plan on installing vista soon (when i get dvd+r blanks, damn dell). Should I just do that and wait for the UB?

thanks
 
I don't think we'll be seeing a new version of Office for mac soon.

I've been happy with my student edition. It comes with three serial codes so you can legally use it on three computers.
 
Personally I will wait, unless you have very very specific needs (which you don't, seeing you are a student) I will stick with NeoOffice first and then buy the Unibin versions of Office '07 when it is out. ;)
 
i agree. go with office 2004 - it is very handy to have in this windows world we're living in :rolleyes:
 
if you need to use excel for creating chart, there isn't a good replacement, for MS Office 04, as long as you have 1G memory, it shouldn't be slow at all. go ahead get it.
I got my copy for $70 at school store, there must be a student discount at your school, try find them.
 
I would just run Office for Windows in Parallels until the UB version if I didn't already own Office: Mac.
 
Yeah I might try your school first....sometimes they'll give you even more of a discount. If not, then the Apple Store is probably your best bet.
 
Don't expect Office 2007 for the Mac until Q3 of 2007. With that said, unless you need Office-specific apps, I would purchase iWork instead.
 
extraextra said:
I doubt that we'll see a new UB version of Office for Mac too. Buy the 2004 edition.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with the suggestion to buy 2004, as I think it's a good software package and it runs fine on an Intel Mac. However, MS has said since the Intel switch was announced that they'll be releasing a UB version of Office. They've officially stated that the next version of Office for Mac will be Universal, and there's even been a fair amount of information about it released (no VB support, for one thing). They haven't said when it will be out, but late 2007/early 2008 seems likely to me.
 
about the next Office for Mac, from arstechnica.com

The good news is that the next version of Mac Office has completed the transition to Xcode, according to Mary Starman, group product manager for the MacBU.

"This was a huge milestone for us" Starman says with equal parts pride and relief. "We had to move from the CodeWare compiler, we were dealing with millions of lines of code and we still had old code that was written in Assembly, so it’s been a long process to switch everything over and for our developers to learn the new tools. Everyone has been working very hard on the transition, it’s been literally all hands on deck".

The bad news is the projected release date for Mac Office.

"Typically we release about 6-8 months after Windows Office, and they've announced general availability in the January timeframe, so we would be 6-8 months after that."

That would see Mac Office 2007 being released approximately a year from now
 
You're going to need a bootable retail copy of XP SP2 to set up a Windows partition.

Otherwise, you can buy Parallels if you only have standard XP Home without SP2.

Your school may be able to get bulk pricing on MS Office 2004 for Mac, so I'd give
them a call.
 
Buy now its cheap and its been patched and works like a charm. Office 2007 wont be released till later in 2007 and even then do you want to have to deal with the bugs of new releases, especially new releases from Microsoft?. I for one won't be buying until its been patched at least thrice. On the flipside iWork is a strong competitor for simple word processing and presentation. I've used it and it works, not as featured as MS Word, but still pretty good.
 
You could try OpenOffice, you can save in .Doc and as well in PDF. Saving in PDF should give no compatability problems at all. Just open with Adobe and print.

www.openoffice.org

I myself use Word 2004.
 
If it is like $5 I certainly wouldn't mind, heck it is even cheaper than downloading it :rolleyes:

I wouldn't pay retail for it though, or even the student discounted price, tried running it under Rosetta... didn't like it. Drove me to buy Mellel instead... and submit my papers as PDFs, which works out fine for my needs.
 
generik said:
If it is like $5 I certainly wouldn't mind, heck it is even cheaper than downloading it :rolleyes:

I wouldn't pay retail for it though, or even the student discounted price, tried running it under Rosetta... didn't like it. Drove me to buy Mellel instead... and submit my papers as PDFs, which works out fine for my needs.
Click to expand...

PDF is a much better format, and much more universal. I won't go on my anti-Office rant, but Adobe reader is free- MS Office is not. I am still trying to figure out why Office is considered by many to be a "standard" when, in reality, it requires the purchase of expensive software to read and edit.

By the way, Office ran too slowly for me on my MBP, which just made the transition to TeXShop/eMacs/LaTeX that much easier.
 
miles01110 said:
PDF is a much better format, and much more universal. I won't go on my anti-Office rant, but Adobe reader is free- MS Office is not. I am still trying to figure out why Office is considered by many to be a "standard" when, in reality, it requires the purchase of expensive software to read and edit.

By the way, Office ran too slowly for me on my MBP, which just made the transition to TeXShop/eMacs/LaTeX that much easier.
Click to expand...

I guess the reason is because Microsoft Word is a quick and dirty word processor, you don't have to publish it or anything, you just hack it out, save it, and off you go... send it off to your contacts. Likewise they can edit it, and send it back to you, something that you can't do with the free Acrobat reader :rolleyes:
 
miles01110 said:
PDF is a much better format, and much more universal. I won't go on my anti-Office rant, but Adobe reader is free- MS Office is not.
Click to expand...

PDF is better in some situations, not all. PDF is not user-editable (which is good in some places, not in others)- WOrd is editable by just about anyone.

MS Office is not free, but there are free MS Office products readers (exactly the same as the free Adobe product). You can get them here:

Office Downloads


miles01110 said:
I am still trying to figure out why Office is considered by many to be a "standard" when, in reality, it requires the purchase of expensive software to read and edit.
Click to expand...

Maybe because 90%+ of the world runs Microsoft software and has some version of Word installed? Maybe in your mac-centric little world Word does not play a role, but in the real world, Word is very much a used standard. For isntance, I was just searching for some information from our local court system- documents are available in PDF and Word; I see this often. FCC site also is PDF/Word.

I create documents to send clients all the time, Word is what most people ask for....

Dave
 
carfac said:
Maybe because 90%+ of the world runs Microsoft software and has some version of Word installed? Maybe in your mac-centric little world Word does not play a role, but in the real world, Word is very much a used standard. For isntance, I was just searching for some information from our local court system- documents are available in PDF and Word; I see this often. FCC site also is PDF/Word.

I create documents to send clients all the time, Word is what most people ask for....

Dave
Click to expand...

I think the question is what is intrinsically in Word that makes it so popular? Why Word? Why not Wordperfect? Or.. what's the other one.. Lotus Smartsuite?
 
Maybe because it comes pre-installed (albiet as "Trial") on every Dell, Gateway, HP and other major manufacturer? Maybe force of habit? It got into the market early, and has the staying power to always be there (MS deep pockets?) Maybe- God forbid!- it actually is a decent product?

I think Office is one of the few things MS does right, and the Mac version is every bit as good as the Win version. One poster above mentioned to wait because the first version of UB may be buggy. I do not think so. This is a very mature product. Sure, it may have a few problems, but it's not like a new product. It has been around the block. I think a lot of the statements made in this post are the result of MS-hate, not real facts...

Dave
 
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