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Office 2004 - Who's Buying?

jaw04005

jaw04005

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 19, 2003
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With the announcement of Office 2004, I really hope they fix some things. I have read so many messages from people bragging about how great Office v. X is compared to the windows version of Office. Am I the only one who does not agree, maybe this comes from being used to the windows version? I absolutely hate Word's vertical formating palettes and why doesn't the document fill up the entire screen in word? And, PowerPoint... mine is completely unstable, it does have some cool features like PowerPoint movies and Packager... but those crash on me all the time. When I create a PowerPoint movie, it adds white frames were the transitions should be... odd.
 
There doesn't sound like enough changes in MSO2004 to buy

I've been using MS Office in Windows since 1991, Office 4.x right up to Office XP.

Personally, I disagree with you. I think Office v.X is heaps better.

And the Formatting Palette is one of my favorite things about v.X. It makes so many settings easily accessible and visible. I give it 10 out of 10.

So, yeah, maybe you are too used to Win Office, but if you use v.X for a while and discover a few more of its extra features, I reckon you'll like it more too.


But I won't be rushing out to get Office 2004 - true to form, MS despite it being a full upgrade, haven't given any worth-my-money extra feature.
 
I use Office v.X on my PowerBook at work right next to the Dell Desktop I have in my office. I can open at least twice as many Word documents on my PowerBook as I can on the Dell.

The Dell runs Windows 2000 and Office 2000. And never fail, if I open 4-6 medium size documents or more, it will run out of memory (512 MB in the Dell) or flake out for some other reason and crash.

I can open the same documents on my PowerBook and leave them open and make edits all day without problems.

I do have some PowerPoint problems. It crashes with complex graphics (stuff made in Visio and exported to JPEG), but I don't use it enough to care. Also, Keynote usually opens the presentations I have problems with no problem at all.

I will buy Office 2004 and VPC 7.0 with Windows XP. I really hope there is a remarkable speed improvement.
 
Originally posted by KershMan
The Dell runs Windows 2000 and Office 2000. And never fail, if I open 4-6 medium size documents or more, it will run out of memory (512 MB in the Dell) or flake out for some other reason and crash.
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Hmmm...FWIW, this combination (Win2k, Office 2k, 512MB ram) is very stable on my Thinkpad at work. I usually have Outlook, about 5 MSIE windows, and 3-4 medium sized documents open simultaneously. Things do get wooly sometimes, though, if Access is one of the apps. FWIW, though, my iBook definitely multitasks better than my thinkpad.

I have Office 97 on my home PC, which I got on Amazon's auction site for $30 shipped, and Office.X on my iBook, which I bought as a student. I'm changing schools, so I guess whether I get Office 04 for my Mac will depend on how much it costs as a student at my new school.... :D
 
I'm a college student at ASU. The business department is all PC except for one professor who happens to like Macs, however the journalism department is all Mac. You are required to take Microcomputer Applications I (Intermediate) & II (Advanced) and that is taught out of the business department. I spent a total of 2 semesters in both of those classes to learn Office. And, it doesn't matter how much you argue, the fact is most "business" departments in college are taught with the PC version of Office. That is just a fact of life. Along with the business departments in high schools. I just think from an educational standpoint since the majority of high school and college kids are taught the PC version with PC features that the Mac educational version features and tools should be the same (or at least have an option to arrange the tools the same). Its very frustrating to have to learn the same program, twice.
 
If you've followed Office releases for a while, when was the last time you saw the addition of a feature you actually used? I started using Word in 1993, then Excel and PowerPoint in 95 and functionally none of them have changed much in 5-6 releases. They look different and take up a lot more resources but they all work just the same way.

FWIW, I like Office x on the Mac far better than the Windows version. It's laid out better and easier to use.
 
Originally posted by joshuawaire
Its very frustrating to have to learn the same program, twice.
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That is a very good point. My wife uses Office on a Dell for work and on her iBook at home. I can't tell you how many times she gets frustrated working on the Dell 'cause she can't figure out how to do something that she can easily do on the Mac because the two apps are different. I've often told her to just transfer the file to her iBook, do what she wants to and then transfer it back to the Dell. She won't, though, she wants to figure it out on the Dell 'cause if she was at work she wouldn't have the option of transferring to the iBook.

The "same" app on two platforms should work the same. Look what Adobe has done with PS, AE, AI, etc. Why can't MS do something similar? Or is it intentional?

Anyway, back on topic, we will probably upgrade. My wife is quite intersted in that feature in Word that will let her take notes and record someone talking, very handy for her at work and in her internship for school.
 
I like the fact that word doesn't automatically assume i want a document to occupy my whole screen. I often have three or four documents opened at the same time and can easily arrange them all over my two screens. You can use different views and make the document take up the screen if you want to.

I also like the floating formatting palette.

This has been the most stable version of word that i have ever used, although it did quit on me earlier today.

I won't buy the new version, but i will download it since it is free for students.
 
I hope in the new version they have better exchange support in Entourage. Also Entourage could do with a performance tweek as well.
 
Originally posted by joshuawaire
I'm a college student at ASU. The business department is all PC except for one professor who happens to like Macs, however the journalism department is all Mac. You are required to take Microcomputer Applications I (Intermediate) & II (Advanced) and that is taught out of the business department. ....
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It's really funny that anyone still uses the term "microcomputer." :D You should be happy they're not making you rock COBOL on a VAX.

I guess I'm sympathetic for people who aren't fairly computer literate, but to be honest, when I switched from Office 97 to Office.X, I've only used help a couple of times to figure out where stuff is. I think it's mostly self-evident.

To the point someone else made, re: when was the last time MS added a useful feature, CHEERS! But actually I do have an answer. I use Asian language support on PCs which was only really offerred starting with Office 2k. And GRRRR -- no Unicode support in Office.X.

The one feature I haven't quite figured out without reading anything, is how to get back to using Office in Japanese. I used AppleWorks last time I wanted to that feature.

Ironic that I've entered songs into iTunes in Japanese without having to use so much as a help file, but in Office.....
 
Its not that im an idiot and can't figure out where things are, they are just drastically different. There are a few others at school that have macs, and have the same problem like trying to use excel formatting, etc.
 
Originally posted by joshuawaire
Its not that im an idiot and can't figure out where things are, they are just drastically different. There are a few others at school that have macs, and have the same problem like trying to use excel formatting, etc.
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What types of problems are you having with excel. I just completed a business course on excel and access. I had to use a pc for access, of course, but i was able to do the excel work on my mac.
 
I have severe lag in excel, when formating fields, cutting & pasting, and deleting... you literally press the correct functions for what your wanting to do and 4 to 5 seconds later it does it and you here the office sound chime.
 
Originally posted by joshuawaire
I have severe lag in excel, when formating fields, cutting & pasting, and deleting... you literally press the correct functions for what your wanting to do and 4 to 5 seconds later it does it and you here the office sound chime.
Click to expand...

That is odd. i am using a PM 933 wth 512 mb of ram and i have had no trouble entering 3 line long compound, complex if functions with vlookups, and/or statements, and many other functions. What type of computer are you using and what kinds of functions do you use?
 
Originally posted by joshuawaire
Its not that im an idiot and can't figure out where things are, they are just drastically different. There are a few others at school that have macs, and have the same problem like trying to use excel formatting, etc.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry -- I shouldn't have implied that. :( I guess I've have had an atypical experience using a lot of different operating systems over time and so ways of doing things in different software or on different platforms don't seem different to me anymore.

Oh, and regarding the delays in Excel.X...I ditto the, "that's strange" -- I put together a large Excel file (in Office 97) for research with a lot of different graphs and sorted lists and stuff on different tables -- about 7 MB file size. When I brought it over to my iBook, it actually did admirably well.
 
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