Whew.

I didn’t know that Entourage 08 was losing Exchange compatibility, that changes everything for me. I guess I’ll be sticking with Office 2004 even on my Intel machines, unless an Exchange plugin or the like is made available.

Only the home/school edition. The higher-end versions will have no such limitation.

Peace,
Gene

I didn’t know that Entourage 08 was losing Exchange compatibility, that changes everything for me. I guess I’ll be sticking with Office 2004 even on my Intel machines, unless an Exchange plugin or the like is made available.

When iWork ‘08 came out I, as a new Mac user, was really excited. I bought a MacBook Pro in March and have made the switch from being a long-time Windows user without any regret. (My only gripe is the inability to find a program that imports Microsoft Money files.)

I used the trial version of iWork, but had to give it up pretty quickly. I was really surprised that in Keynote, which is a phenomenal application, that you can’t import several files into one presentation as you can in PowerPoint. That sealed the deal for me since that is the main need that I have for a presentation program. Also, whereas working with 2-up pages in Word is a snap, it is not easy at all in Pages.

I’ve been using Office ‘04 and will probably get Office ‘08 because of the aforementioned issues. I liked the interface and update from Office 2003 to Office 2007 on the Windows platform, and what I see of Office 2008 makes me think that the upgrade will be worth the cost, unless I can overcome the deficiencies in iWork mentioned above.

The big question, and that’s a sticky point for me is if an age old bug in Entourage is fixed. The philosophy that you can put all your eggs in one basket. One file known as “Database” controls the contents of your email folders, addressbook, and calendar. If that becomes too big, it corrupts easily. And even though they have a database repair program now, it does not work 100% of the time. I’m just glad I got my mail out of Entourage and migrated to Mail Addressbook, and iCal using the FAQ http://www.macmaps.com/entouragemigration.html

Now at least my Addressbook, Calendar, and email folders are all separate folders, so that if one file doesn’t quite work right, I just go and grab its backup. Microsoft has another serious usability issue. No integration with Microsoft Access. They came to my usergroup and told me it would take 100 years to port over the code from Access to the Mac. I say baloney. If Visual Basic can be translated into Realbasic which is crossplatform, and Access to Filemaker as well as Filemaker have ODBC links to allow it to integrate with Access, having Access for the Mac should be easy. Either fix Entourage, or bring us Access. That’s what Mac users really need to get Apple to make a dent into the business environments.

Don’t forget the lack of compatibility with the Microsoft Document Imaging format. This was a feature in Office 2003 that is missing in Office 2004 and probably won’t show up in Office 2008.

My main concern with Office 2008 is their apparent dropping of Exchange support except in the two most expensive versions. Exchange support was a free update to Entourage 2004 quite some time ago and as best I can tell, the student/home version ($150) will not support Exchange (other than what Entourage can do with any IMAP-based server, including .mac). Aside from some automator scripts and exchange support, I’m not sure what an additional $250 gets the average user to move up from the $150 home/student edition.

This is indeed an interesting question. Basically the home/student edition loses nothing but those two features, and you also get three serial numbers, so you can install simultaneously on three computers. Remember that Office does a network activation check to make sure that two copies with the same serial number aren’t running.

If you don’t care about Exchange (and certainly I have no use for it) and are not immersed in Automator and/or AppleScript, the low-end version is the perfect choice.

Peace,
Gene

Gene,

I use Word and Pages to write novels. I’d hoped to move everything over to Pages with 3.0 and leave Word behind, but it hasn’t worked out that way. I still compose in Pages because it’s just easier on the eyes. Pages just looks better, particularly after a five hour stint. However, when I begin the second draft I still have to jump over into Word. Pages hangs on the ‘find and replace’ command with a document exceeding eighty thousand words, particular if I’m working on my iBook. It takes forever on the Intel machine as well. Also, Pages lacks variable zoom which means I can’t optimize text on the iBook. If memory serves, variable zoom was selectable in the previous version. Moving from a large screen to a notebook screen really requires variable zoom.

I still love composing in Pages, though, and plan to use the two programs, Pages and Word, in tandem.

Richard

I’ve completely skipped 2007 on the Windows side as 2003 does absolutely everything I could want it to do. I’ll go to 2008 on my Macs simply for the Intel native speed, but certainly won’t rush out and get licenses for my PPC Macs, which will stay in the 2004 version. What would cause me to migrate fully to the 2007/2008 versions is the adoption of the new file format by any of the state or federal courts that I deal with.

Import/export converters are just not an option with pleading paper.

My main concern with Office 2008 is their apparent dropping of Exchange support except in the two most expensive versions. Exchange support was a free update to Entourage 2004 quite some time ago and as best I can tell, the student/home version ($150) will not support Exchange (other than what Entourage can do with any IMAP-based server, including .mac). Aside from some automator scripts and exchange support, I’m not sure what an additional $250 gets the average user to move up from the $150 home/student edition.

I use NeoOffice instead. I was using MS Office 2004 for Mac. NeoOffice imports and exports the new standard (docx) files. And it does not change the interface. I went to an MS Office 2007 workshop training and Windows Office 2007 is a huge MESS! Folks in and outside of academia have having a very troublesome time with the change. Some of my fellow academics are wanting to switch to Mac because of this and the awful Vista interface. MS is only shooting themselves in the foot again! Go ahead MS, do that.

Despite the over-eager spin control from Microsoft, I think it’s clear that Office 2007 isn’t doing quite as well as they hoped. I mean, is there any real reason to upgrade? Does the ribbon and new file format do anything to help someone increase their workflow? Does it help ease of use? Probably not.

Peace,
Gene

I use NeoOffice instead. I was using MS Office 2004 for Mac. NeoOffice imports and exports the new standard (docx) files. And it does not change the interface. I went to an MS Office 2007 workshop training and Windows Office 2007 is a huge MESS! Folks in and outside of academia have having a very troublesome time with the change. Some of my fellow academics are wanting to switch to Mac because of this and the awful Vista interface. MS is only shooting themselves in the foot again! Go ahead MS, do that.

Like Kevin says, I have read comments that suggest the next Office for Windows will also dump VBA support for pretty much the same reason as Office 2008 has on the Mac. That being it is too hard to port it to a 64bit Windows environment.

I seem to recall comments suggesting a replacement something like VB.net being used instead.

Now, if Microsoft (or more specifically the MacBU) has even two brain cells to rub together, rather than simply saying we are not going to include VBA in Office 2008, they should have added BUT we will eventually add VB.net when it is also added to the Windows version.

This would have then accomplished the very important task of reassuring Mac businesses that true cross-platform compatibility would at least at some point in the future be restored.

Microsoft by utterly failing to do this leave all their Mac customers in the lurch.

I am IT Manager for a company that is 100% Mac based but we still use VBA Macros in Word and Excel, and still need to be able to exchange documents with the great unwashed majority afflicted with Windows. With Microsoft so completely failing to address Mac businesses concerns, we have no choice but to IGNORE Office 2008 and stick with Office 2004. This is going to lose Microsoft tens of thousands of dollars in upgrades just from our relatively small company (so one can imagine the impact globally, Office 2008 could turn out to be an even bigger turkey than the Zune or Vista).

Of course this failing is on top of oh so many others by Microsoft, it appears almost certain that Office 2008 will still not support right-to-left languages like Hebrew and Arabic, MSN Messenger still does not do video or voice, licensing for Vista is still designed to screw Mac users of Parallels or VM Ware, etc. etc. etc.

Apple can manage to produce several FREE programs for Windows of equal features and quality to their Mac products, why cannot the Worlds biggest software company produce even one decent Mac application?

One word: Speed. Many of us using Office 2004 on Intel Macs are holding our collective breath for a much faster version of office. Power Point is absolutely glacial compared to Keynote now. Entourage can slow to a crawl or just stop working as well. If MS doesn’t have much faster applications in the next version of this suite, I will probably stick with 2004 for excel and word tasks alone.

Unfortunately or interestingly, MS’s decision to drop VBA just encouraged me to purchase Office 2004; I currently use Office v.X. This way I can have the latest version with VBA and the Intel native version. My choice is to use Mac + Office or Windows. Well, I’m not getting Windows.

As users of Office, we should ask MS to add back the VBA functionality. If they receive enough requests and are serious about the Mac, perhaps we’ll get it in a year or so – Office ‘08 SP 1?