Advice on Excel question

[JAXE MAC]

Hi everyone,
I recently switched over to the wonderful world of Mac and have no plans of switching back. I bought a standard macbook and everything has been great so far.
I do have one difficulty coming up. Next quarter, I'm taking a statistics class that is requiring the use of Excel and it's statistical analysis add-on. So far in school, I've been able to get away with using neo-office or other shareware programs (as an aside, the robustness of shareware Mac applications has been a pleasant surprise) to avoid buying Office for Mac. I do have a copy of XP and Office XP for Windows but I've avoided loading bootcamp and XP or buying parallels and loading XP because I like the way OS X has handled everything.
I guess my options are:
1. Load bootcamp, XP, and Office on my macbook
(+) free to me
(-) major bloat on my system, PITA to switch to bootcamp for one program
2. Buy parallels, load XP and Office
(+) more convienent
(-) cost and bloat
3. Buy Office for Mac
(+) convenience, decent programs though use limited
(-) cost, was hoping instead to buy iWorks because Keynote kicks ass
4. Other???? Am I missing anything?

Thanks for your responses!!!

 

[akadmon]

Hi everyone,
I recently switched over to the wonderful world of Mac and have no plans of switching back. I bought a standard macbook and everything has been great so far.
I do have one difficulty coming up. Next quarter, I'm taking a statistics class that is requiring the use of Excel and it's statistical analysis add-on. So far in school, I've been able to get away with using neo-office or other shareware programs (as an aside, the robustness of shareware Mac applications has been a pleasant surprise) to avoid buying Office for Mac. I do have a copy of XP and Office XP for Windows but I've avoided loading bootcamp and XP or buying parallels and loading XP because I like the way OS X has handled everything.
I guess my options are:
1. Load bootcamp, XP, and Office on my macbook
(+) free to me
(-) major bloat on my system, PITA to switch to bootcamp for one program
2. Buy parallels, load XP and Office
(+) more convienent
(-) cost and bloat
3. Buy Office for Mac
(+) convenience, decent programs though use limited
(-) cost, was hoping instead to buy iWorks because Keynote kicks ass
4. Other???? Am I missing anything?

Thanks for your responses!!!

If all you want to do is run Office, I'd go with Parallels. Not sure what you mean by bloat. You can probably set up a basic Windows+Office VM for under 3GB.

I would definitely not go with Office for Mac today. Wait till Fall of next year -- that's when the new native version will come out (at least that's the word from MS). Hopefully it will have all the latest bells & whistles found in the current Windows version.

 

[ChickenSwartz]

CrossOver Mac
This is your solution. It is free to try in the beta form for 60 days, then you will need to spend $39.95 to "pre-order" the final release.

I am using this solution as I too need Excel in ways that OpenOffice cannot help me with.

Office XP works well through CrossOver, I haven't had many problems. I also have Photoshop 7 working.

I am planning on buying Office:Mac next year (June/July) when the new, UB version is released.

 

[JAXE MAC]

You're right! That is my solution. Man, what did people do before internet forums?
Now I just need to time it out so that my free 60 day trial coincides with my 10 week quarter for school.

As far as bloat, I guess 3 GB doesn't seem like too much on a 60 GB hard drive, but just to use part of one program's application, it feels a little heavy.

Thanks for the speedy and completely enlightening responses!

 

[ChickenSwartz]

You're right! That is my solution. Man, what did people do before internet forums?
Now I just need to time it out so that my free 60 day trial coincides with my 10 week quarter for school.

As far as bloat, I guess 3 GB doesn't seem like too much on a 60 GB hard drive, but just to use part of one program's application, it feels a little heavy.

Thanks for the speedy and completely enlightening responses!

OK I am not saying you should do this but I am just putting the facts out there.

If you remove CrossOver and then reinstall it starts your 60 days over again. I found this because the first time I installed it and then tried to install Office XP it didn't work right. About a month later I decided to completely uninstall and reinstall as a last hope effort not to have to buy Office again. After the reinstall Office installed correctly and the 60 days started over.

 

[JAXE MAC]

I would never do such a thing.







P.S.-
Thanks