My company uses Microsoft Office on our macs and pcs and got a deal with Microsoft called their "Home Use Program" or HUP. For $23, I was able to get a licensed copy of Office 04 for my Mac at home. See if your friends or family has this deal at work and get Office through them. It's cheap compared to student discounts or getting it through a store.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Should I Buy MS Office 04 (Students Edition)?
- Thread starter Steve Jobless
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
you should definitely get it. why? because it is the gold standard to work on.
MS will not be coming out with the replacement until fall of 2007.
so what are you going to be doing for the year in the interm? i thought so...
get it at best price you can though
MS will not be coming out with the replacement until fall of 2007.
so what are you going to be doing for the year in the interm? i thought so...
get it at best price you can though
generik said:
That everyone else has it. wordperfect died when it failed to upgrade the program for several years. Word meanwhile became better, gave out free copies preloaded, and got a lot of people to switch.
awhitaker said:
I have that as well. But getting it through a friend would be pirating it. The cost of the home use program is just for the media and shipping (i.e., a CD). You're basically using the license your work has bought for you. So it does not apply to someone not employed by the company (well, maybe your wife/husband at home).
In other words, if you're inclined to use Office without a license, just borrow a friend's install disc, instead of fooling with the home use program.
I get why word documents are so popular, just not why word and office itself is. I use OpenOffice on the PC, and if the Mac versions are anywhere near as good, I don't see why I should ever pay for an office suite again...
David
David
(Im a newbie) I have just bought a MBP, my first mac, and nearly bought Office 2004, but then i realised that OpenOffice does all i need. I only need a word processor as all the excel work i do is calss based. And you can save OpenOffice files as .doc's and then use them in windows office. Im sticking to this until Office '2007' comes out, then i will re-assess. But they better get a move on, at this rate i wont be a student anymore by the time the release it. ha!
carfac said:
Hmm, I would think that the government of all things would want their files in an uneditable format. Same with you and your dealings with clients- I don't know your line of work, but it seems to me (at first glance) that it might be advantageous to send a client a file that they can't edit. I don't have enough information to make an informed opinion, but you probably see what I'm getting at. For example, a purchase order/invoice would never be sent in .doc format due to editability.
For many years there was no free Office document reader widely available via the internet as there is now.
I'm used to the world of science academia. If anyone submitted a paper in .doc format, it would be laughed out of the department office. That's not anything to do with Microsoft-hate, it's just reality. Every major journal, newspaper, publishing company, or otherwise that prints electronically uses PDF. I can't remember the last time I installed an application with instructions in .doc format. So maybe what I meant to say is that Word is fine for the laity, but when you move into the professional world you might need to make a change to PDF.
I think it's a combination of things - why 'word' and 'office' is so dominant (and I do agree with the thoughts already put fwd) - I do think MS saturated the market with their 'office suite' early on - when nothing else was available - eg...in just about every workplace we all need excel, ppt, word at the very minimum to get things done.
I know I have no other product I can use - so if you work for government, academia, NGO's etc etc - what one thing that all links us is the interoperability of 'word' and for academics in particular the use of 'endnote' within 'word'.
Sure there are other database and other apps that do the same job - but most ppl who produce work must share it at some time with colleagues - and not too many ppl have 'file maker pro' etc but they do have 'office'. It is true that before work goes to the printer - PDF is the standard - and Adobe's PDF app is wonderful - but only as an end product.
I know I have no other product I can use - so if you work for government, academia, NGO's etc etc - what one thing that all links us is the interoperability of 'word' and for academics in particular the use of 'endnote' within 'word'.
Sure there are other database and other apps that do the same job - but most ppl who produce work must share it at some time with colleagues - and not too many ppl have 'file maker pro' etc but they do have 'office'. It is true that before work goes to the printer - PDF is the standard - and Adobe's PDF app is wonderful - but only as an end product.
miles01110 said:
it's sad, but not true.
i've been requested to submit my articles to some journals in .doc format. what shall they do with a pdf - they still have to do the layout (inkl. the tables) and so on.
this is true especially for social science - if you write your papers about mathematic or IT then latex would be the standard to use..
well i have a disc that came with my dell, and i just installed bootcamp/vista so i guess i could use that....
I'm in advertising and while all the creatives have Macs, the others use PC's. They use excel and powerpoint a lot for presentations and meetings. I use Word as a copywriter to write headlines, copy, etc. This work can then be used by our art directors who use InDesign, photoshop, Quark, and illustrator to lay the copy into the ads. The people who use PC's can also open and read these documents. I guess I could use another word program but I'm guessing we get a pretty good deal on MS Office licenses and since we use all of the programs in the suite, it makes sense. Now once we send any work out including copy, we usually send them as pdf's. MS Office just makes sense and Apple has really never tried to compete in this market. Actually they've tried but have never succeeded. MS has the monopoly on that market kind of like Adobe has the market on photoshop and illustrator and with their new InDesign, they're taking shares away from Quark because of how user-friendly it is with the other Adobe products.
awhitaker said:
If I needed Office I could buy it for around $20 due to my institution's licensing deal or whatever with Microsoft. If I needed it, I wouldn't pay more than that. I agree that for a lot of people Office does fine- they buy because they don't know about OpenOffice or NeoOffice, etc. But...the cons of Word outweigh the pros. Excel is pretty good though, I sometimes reduce myself to using that
I recommend OpenOffice.org for everything that you need that may need to be ported to MS Office. Google also has http://writely.com, which is really amazing as far as MS Word compatibility. OpenOffice.org Writer and MS Word aren't 100% identical, but writely.com seems to bridge that gap.
I've been using OpenOffice.org for over 2 years, have attempted to go with MS Office a few times but simply couldn't justify the cost.
I've been using OpenOffice.org for over 2 years, have attempted to go with MS Office a few times but simply couldn't justify the cost.
sierra oscar said:
That is not the way it happened. In the early '80's, these were significant players in the PC office applications:
Spreadsheets: Lotus 123, Quatro Pro
Word Processors: Samba (AmiPro), Wordperfect, Wordstar
Database: R:Base, DBase, Clipper, Foxpro, Paradox
None of the MS Office products were the leading product in their market. But, they were the first to 'bundle' these and offer them as a suite (PC). Then they practically gave them away with the purchase of a new PC.
This cut the R&D revenues from Borland, Lotus Development, Wordperfect, Ashton-Tate, etc. When Windows was introduced, guess who had the products ready, developed in concert with the OS (sorta OS) and who was left holding the bag? It is easy to figure out. When these other programs did finally arrive in Windows form, they were dreadful.
MS never had the better products. They had their wealth to leverage. But, I am not crying for these other guys. They probably would have done the same. But, calling MS an innovator is pretty weak. Access 1.0 had to be worst application ever put in shrink wrap.
Demoman said:
I actually agree with your thoughts - but I don't think you really read (or got) my post - I said MS was great in 'saturating' the market (end of story)
The fact that I think you missed my point completely is fine - I didn't get into speaking historically at all - just talking about what this strategy has done for MS and how it appears now in workplaces. Everyone had the 'office suite', not the other standalone databases or various word offerings.