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Want MBP but still have two issues

RobT

RobT

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 20, 2007
679
163
Ohio, USA
Well I'm ready to order a MBP but still have two concerns:

1. Reading the forums leads me to believe that there will be an electrical current on the chassis problem or loose battery cover or some other flaw.

2. What do I do for Word documents? Everything I read about Office 2008 for MAC is negative (it's slow, it crashes, etc). I don't really want to dual boot into Windows...I'm trying to get away from Windows. Have any of you used Office for MAC without issues?

What are your thoughts about the above?

TIA
 
Pages open word documents. You could get word 2008 for mac (pricey tho)
I think there is open source software that can open word documents if you want free but not as good as pages.
 
You have to keep in mind that reading these forums, you are more likely to encounter posts by those that are having issues with their computers than those that aren't. People are more vocal about complaints than they are when happy. I have a 17" Penryn MBP with no issues whatsoever. I also have an Alu MB with no problems either. If you happen to get a bad one, Apple is rated one of the top in customer satisfaction and will gladly work with you to find a solution. Heck, there's a thread about a guy that returned his MB 4 times within 2 days!

As for Word, you can always get iWork '08. It includes Pages '08 that allows you to convert to and from Word documents. Not to mention Excel and Power Point slides too (Numbers '08 and Keynote '08 respectively).
 
Yes, I agree... Don't gauge satisfaction by what the few who had incidencts post (and even they are still big Apple proponents)! If it's under warranty you'll be fine, but I also recommend you get AppleCare (which you can buy for $100 off the list price) for 2 more years of added reassurance. I actually heard good things about Office for Mac, but to be honest, I do a lot of advanced contracts, spreadsheets, etc. for two businesses and I still get by on the free AppleWorks program and FileMaker Pro, as well as some free third-party apps. At least use the free trial iWork offer to check it out, and don't hesitate on a Mac! ;)

http://www.apple.com/iwork/

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...ode=home/mac/campaigns/ms_office_2008_landing
 
Hi,
I am typing on my new mac and it is amazing no issues yet.Not battery cover loose or anything the only thing a dont know if it is a fault yet but the trackpad is quite loud.I would seriously recommend mac now just switched from pc. I use office for mac instead of iwork being the point i used office on pc and was more compatible with office for mac.I have not had any problems with office yet maybe dont know wether thats because I have the 2.8ghz 320gb @ 7200rpm (not boasting or anything ;)! as apple say "It Just works" and it does oh the only thing is apple sent me the wrong adapter they sent me a mini vga for the new macbook pro wtf lol.

Regards

Jonathan
 
Office on the Mac is slow, it takes so long just to load. But on my Vista machine, it's fast as heck. The same issue with itunes, on vista it's slow, but on a Mac its fast.
 
I've been using Mac Office 2008, and it was pretty bad at the beginning, but I don't notice anything that's a real deal breaker with the most recent updates.
 
Word isn't too bad on a Mac, though Pages is fine too. Excel, though, is terrible unless you only have a view data points, but Numbers isn't anywhere near as good. I dunno about Keynote vs PowerPoint, haven't used it.

the open-source alternative is OpenOffice/NeoOffice.
 
Having installed Office 2008 on my new MBP, I definitely notice some issues. Most significant and annoying to me at least is that it seems the cursor on Word cannot keep up with my typing speed. I am not the fastest typer by far, but my speed is above average. I have had a hard time adjusting to the new layouts compared to the Office 2003 setup on my old Dell laptop. In all honesty, I have been reverting back to my Dell for most school assignments using Excel. I guess I need to spend more time becoming accustomed to the differences between the two versions.

EDIT: No Office 2008 apps have crashed on me yet.
 
I'm a new mac user (late 08 MPB) and I have office 08 installed. So far I'm only using Word but it works fine for me and only takes a moment to start up. Guess I don't have the issues others are having...yet.
 
Office 2008 isn't that bad. It could be better and faster, but it does work. Plus I usually have it open already if I need it. And, I'm running it presently on an old PowerMac G5. That said, I try to use NeoOffice as much as I can. NeoOffice is a Mac specific derivative of OpenOffice and is very good. Another option not mentioned is Lotus Symphony which is a free alternative to MS Office that is available for the Mac. It is quite powerful and IBM is determined to give Microsoft a go with it I think.

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/mac
 
Just throwing this out there...

I make my living as a writer. I use MS Word and agree that it's a bit laggy. However, if you plan on writing large projects - novels, a PhD thesis, or long manuscripts of any kind, check out Scrivener. You can find it at http://www.literatureandlatte.com/ and download a free trial copy. Best 30 bucks I've ever spent. It's an infinitely better way to write and organize large manuscripts.

And it's available only for Mac.
 
...also couldn't hurt to download and give the free 30-day iWork trial a shot too. When it comes to word processing (& spreadsheets, database, presentation, etc.) the possibilities are endless (and often free).
 
Hi there,

Firstly, I'm typing this on my new MBP, which is flawless (BTW). I don't believe that the issues seen on this forum are a valid reason to defer a purchase. They are a very small percentage of the total machines sold. Online forums should never be used as an accurate indication of the "quality" of a product, because they simply are totally inaccurate. Again, mine is flawless and so are many others reported here.

Secondly, regarding Office 2008. Being a university student in the sciences I run the entire suite on a daily basis. I did a few basic timing exercises to give you an impression of how fast it is:

1. Open a 112.4MB Powerpoint file (from double-click on file to fully opened and displayed) --> Between 5-6 seconds.

2. Open a 9 page (2200 word) 44kb Word doc (from double-click on file to fully opened and displayed) --> Between 9-10 seconds.

3. Open a 5 sheet 76kb Excel spreadsheet (from double-click on file to fully opened and displayed) --> Between 8-9 seconds.

Edit: I should note that all these tests were conducted from a fresh reboot. Each time the app was launched it was a "fresh launch" from a "cold start" (IE: had not previously been launched on the same boot). This way the app in question (or the file) were never loaded into RAM before opening them.

I've found Powerpoint in particular to be quite snappy. I regularly deal with large Powerpoint files with detailed, high resolution images contained within them (cough, Biochem lectures, cough). 112MB is around average, although I have a 646MB one; it's only a few seconds slower to open. I can type notes in them as fast as I can type (including key mashing); there's no lag whatsoever. Same goes for Word. I'm not sure where other posters who say there is lag in these apps get that idea, I've never experienced that with Office 08, which is Intel native.

Don't get the impression that I'm some sort of Office fanboy though, I only use it strictly based on necessity. I need 100% compatibility in files. It's never crashed on me yet on this computer; and for what its worth, I find the PC versions that I'm forced to use in lab settings crash more on me than the latest Office 2008 for Mac...

In short, Office works fine on Mac OS X and will run swiftly on a new MBP. Don't let that deter you either! If you have any questions feel free!

--mAc
 
RobT said:
Well I'm ready to order a MBP but still have two concerns:

1. Reading the forums leads me to believe that there will be an electrical current on the chassis problem or loose battery cover or some other flaw.

2. What do I do for Word documents? Everything I read about Office 2008 for MAC is negative (it's slow, it crashes, etc). I don't really want to dual boot into Windows...I'm trying to get away from Windows. Have any of you used Office for MAC without issues?

What are your thoughts about the above?

TIA
Click to expand...

1. The electrical current issue on the chassis is solved by using a the 3 pin plug with a proper ground pin. Or lifting up your legs.

2. I use Office (winwords, excel, power point, etc) for my work too. There are several ways to get things done.
(1) Office 2008 for Mac is slow. Even the loading is slow.
(2) VMWare/Parallel, run office in the emulator, very slow (486 era). But all the software that operates with Winword could be used, such as Origin (for plotting graphs), Endnote (for references), Visio files, etc.
(3) Dualboot, the 'problem' with dualboot is that, at least for mbp, XP/Vista uses the 9600M graphics card by default, and not the 9400M integrated graphics card. The machine becomes hot very quickly.

Option (2) is my preferred way of handling Winword files at the moment. Although it is slow, and the fonts does not look right.

They didn't really solve the problems for PC users completely. If you write your 200 pages thesis using latex, your boss wants to edit them in winword, with all those tables, pictures, references, etc. --that is game over.
 
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