Similar program to MS Project for Mac?

[jscheiman]

Hello all,

This one has me stumped. I have talked a fellow employee into purchasing a new iBook instead of a PC notebook as they will mostly be using it for word processing and internet surfing while taking it to and from class.

They asked if Microsoft Project would work on it as I had told them they can use MS Office on this new Apple machine. I had never heard of 'MS Project' before. So I searched it out online:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857951033.aspx

Apparently it is somekind of scheduler type program?

From the site:
Q. What is Project 2003?
A. Project 2003 is a family of products designed to address the work and people management needs of today's organizations. Products in the Project 2003 family include Microsoft Office Project Standard 2003, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, and Microsoft Office Project Web Access.

My question is whether any if you know of a similar application for the Mac or if they would be best off to just run something like Virtual PC for Mac?

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=virtualpc

I appreciate any feedback on this. It definatley has me stumped, even after reading about it on the Microsoft web pages!

 

[blodwyn]

MS Project is far from a scheduler program - it's a project management application meant for managing the tasks, task dependencies, resources and costs necessary for completing projects from simple, up to a fair degree of complexity. And it doesn't run on a Mac, except for in VPC.

Equivalent Mac applications run around $199 - $299, and there are a bunch listed here. I've also heard good things about Merlin, but I haven't actually tried it.

 

[jscheiman]

Thanks blodwyn,

These links are a HUGE help! I will look them ove and pass this info along. They are looking to buy their new machine tonight or tomorrow!

 

[blodwyn]

Thanks blodwyn,

These links are a HUGE help! I will look them ove and pass this info along. They are looking to buy their new machine tonight or tomorrow!

No problem, happy to help. I'm sure they'll be happy with their purchase.

 

[bellis1]

Lagging

I think that this is an area in which there is still room for someone to fill the niche. Microsoft entourage is great because it allows for the integration of mail, contacts, calendar, and work related files. The problem is it just does not take advatage of OS X. It's mail search capabilities are poor, it's got an ugly design, and it won't allow for you to attach many types of files to projects. Merlin is a great program but way beyond anything I need. I simply need a reliable program that I can link mail.app, ical, addressbook, and files from various ongoing projects. A couple simple additions to iCal and mail.app would greatly improve things. Spotlight clearly has the potential to do merge all of these, now if only ical was revamped a little and someone would make a nice GUI that integrates all of these.

iWorkflow perhaps?