What of MS Office 2008 for Mac? An Update
By Robert Pritchett
Released: August
12, 2008
$400 USD
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, 512MB RAM, 1.5 GB Hard drive
space, DVD Drive, Microsoft Office 12.1.
MS 12.1.2 Update: http://tinyurl.com/5jcfpq
Applies to: Office 2008, Office 2008 Home and Student Edition,
Office 2008 Special Media Edition, Word 2008, Excel 2008, PowerPoint 2008,
Entourage 2008.
160MB Download |
|
"This update
contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance. In
addition, this update includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can
use to overwrite the contents of your computer's
memory with malicious code. For more
information about this update, please visit the Microsoft Web site."
Strengths: Works with MS Exchange Server. Uses Applescript.
iPhoto integration.
Weaknesses: No VBA compatibility. Considered by many to be a
Trojan application. Load up to three computers per license, but can only use
one computer at a time. |
Why macCompanion magazine didn't review MS Office 2008 for Mac.
Released back in January 2008, MS Office for Mac by MS knew
our reputation for being truthful and knew we would not give them a good
review. Others didn't either. Why didn't MS make a "real" version
(they made 3) that was Universal Binary and worked natively in Mac OS X? It
isn't like they don't have enough programmers. (Snarky Remark™)
Bottom line: If you
have MS Office 2004, stay with it. If you bought MS Office 2008, see if you can
get a refund. See if you can get
MS Office 2004 for Mac instead.
In all fairness, they did finally release an update to
address issues in August 2008
Other Reviews:
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3215
http://reviews.cnet.com/office-suites/microsoft-office-for-mac/4505-3524_7-32659647.html
http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/office2008/
A Positive Review – (But "Dr. Mac" gets paid for support) –
http://www.macobserver.com/review/2008/04/08.2.shtml
Another positive review - http://www.mac-guild.org/reviews/review409.html
Scathing Amazon Feedback -
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-2008-for-Mac/dp/B000WR2F2M
By Sean Rogers (Australia)
As most of the other reviewers have written, this product
is not worth buying. I got a free copy as I went to the product launch, and was
soon incensed that Microsoft could sell this with a straight face.
Let's look at the listed "product features" one
by one:
1. Streamlined user interface runs natively on both Intel-
and PowerPC-based Macs
- Streamlined is an interesting word to use. I never had
the displeasure of using Office for Mac 2004 on my Intel Mac, but from all
reports it ran terribly. I shudder to think that this edition is supposedly
running better. The Office applications are without a doubt the slowest
applications running on my Mac, and this includes Parallels which allows me to
run Windows in a virtual machine. The idea that this is "streamlined"
is laughable.
2. Open XML file formats, the Office Art graphics engine,
and other features that result in compatibility and file fidelity - This is
probably the main reason new-comers would buy Office, for compatibility with
Office for Windows users. However, the compatibility is full of problems. Do
not spend any time working on layout for your Word documents if you're then
sending them to a Windows user; the layout will be completely ruined and you'll
have to do it all again. I also have Office for Windows running through
Parallels, and I usually end up using that if I hope to share my documents. Office
for Mac just doesn't do it properly. Keep in mind that Apple's Pages can read
docx (some say better than Word for Mac does), although it can't write back to
docx.
3. Professional design is within your power with hundreds
of new customizable templates and suite-wide themes, SmartArt graphics, and the
new Publishing Layout View in Word 2008 - This is all well and good but if you
wanted great templates and layout capabilities, you would buy iWork for a
quarter of the price... which is certainly my recommendation. Did I mention the
layout capabilities don't work reliably anyway?
4. My Day keeps you connected to all of the day's action.
Command your calendar, tackle your tasks, and simplify your day - If you own a
Mac you have iCal. Why would this be a selling point to anyone?
5. Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, Microsoft
Server Exchange Support
- And therein lies perhaps the main reason Office for Mac
will still be purchase even though it is greatly inferior to competing
products: Microsoft Server Exchange Support. Apparently much of the world runs
on this these days. Let's be thankful that Google and SalesForce are teaming up
to take it down once and for all...
So in summary, the real reasons to buy this product are as
follows:
1. You are forced to require Microsoft Server Exchange
Support.
Err... I put a number 1 because I thought there would be
more but there actually isn't. Compatibility with Windows users is important,
but Office for Mac just doesn't deliver here. Personally I would buy iWork -
did I mention it is a quarter of the price for an equivalent product? Microsoft
Office for Mac is a typical half-hearted, over-priced attempt from Microsoft,
but no one can deny that their propaganda will make it a best-seller.
By John S. Malcolmson
Such high hopes for this upgrade, but 2008 is for the most
part a change of window dressing. We bought this to be compatible with the
occasional client who uses office, also for the email/scheduling system.
PROS:
Syncs with ical
Love the My Day app that let's you see a snapshot of
schedule and tasks and flagged emails pop into this list.
Has had an immediate productivity boost.
Improved GUI, less cheesey.
Improved junk mail filtering.
CONS:
Fonts Loading: 20-50 seconds load time for each
application in the suite. Then if you're using PowerPoint or Word clicking on
the font list invokes a delay of up to 3 seconds. If you have a few fonts open
and you're working on a document in PowerPoint doc it's a deal-breaker -- even
turning off WYSIWYG font menu bears the same results unless you're rocking a
Penryn. We're using Apple's Keynote now.
Microsoft tells you, you can "install it on up to
three computers". What they don't tell you is it can only be running on
one -- it sniffs the network to find other computers and will make you quit.
This is very annoying if you have a tower and a laptop.
PowerPoint Crashes
CONCLUSION
Overall I feel a bit duped by Microsoft -- new bells and
whistles but feels like little effort has been put into overhauling the engine
of this beast. If I were to do it again, I would buy ilife, but admit that I
still use and prefer their email app. Entourage (mainly because of My Day)
By Photoguy
Using this program makes my iMac (core 2 duo, with default
1 gig memory) run REALLY slowly, usually making the program almost unusable.
[Contrast this to iWork (a small fraction of the price, by the way) which opens
much more quickly and runs super smoothly.] Office has also crashed on me a few
times (I'm running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11. Maybe its more stable on Leopard?).
I also don't understand why people get this because they
need Office compatibility. I opened a document from Word 2003, and in Pages it
looked like the original, but in Word 2008 the margins were different and words
showed up on different lines.
The program looks nice with its blue glass, but to tell
you the truth, iWork looks more elegant and has its good looks without
sacrificing intuitive use. I mean, in iWork you can have the text formatting
toolbar always show, but in Office you always have to choose between one kind
of toolbar set or another (in a side-window). For people used to using Office
2003 on Windows (like me), you'll actually feel less at home in Office 2008
than in other programs (like iWork or even the simple OpenOffice.org).
I have Office 2008 and iWork, and while I can highly
recommend iWork, I keep the Office icons out of the Dock. I even find myself
opening Word documents in Pages more often than in Word because its just more
reliable and it loads the documents just fine. Save yourself the time and
money, and don't get this program.
By A. Anderson "Technophobe" (Danbury, CT)
If you do any programming or statistical analysis with
Office, stay away from this ripoff!!! VBA and the Analysis Toolpak are gone --
and of course, you won't find this out until AFTER you've wasted your
money!!!!!
Update: Accidentally added arrows from Word 2008 to an
existing Word 2004 document; now it can't be opened on any PC, and it won't
print either. Excel 2008 will not save any documents on the grounds that I
don't have enough hard drive space; in fact, I have over 600 GB of space
available. ABSOLUTE GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
