Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac goes gold, ships next month

[AppleInsider]

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it has wrapped up development of Office 2008 for Mac, the first overhaul to its productivity software suite for Apple's Mac users in nearly half a decade.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said the frozen code will be released to manufacturing later this evening, ahead of the software's official launch next month at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Come January 15th, Office 2008 for Mac will be available in three distinct editions ranging from an entry level $150 Home and Student Edition to a high-end $500 Special Media Edition.

However, Microsoft is currently running its "Super Suite Deal" promotion, which allows customers to purchase the current $330 Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Standard edition or the current $130 Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher edition and then receive the $500 Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition for only the cost of shipping and handling.

To take advantage of this offer, simply purchase Office 2004 for Mac Standard Edition ($330) or Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher Edition ($130) from an authorized reseller like Amazon.com by January 14th. (Your receipt must be dated between Nov. 1, 2007 and Jan. 14, 2008.) Then print and complete the Super Suite Deal Redemption Form [pdf].

Those customers who participate in the promotion and return the Super Suite Deal Redemption Form by February 14th, 2008 will receive a copy of Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition for the cost of shipping ($7.00 US, $10 CND) once it becomes available next month.

Microsoft does not appear to be requiring proof that participants who purchase Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher Edition are actually students or teachers. Therefore it appears likely that anyone can purchase the Student and Teach Edition for $130 from Amazon and then receive a copy of the $500 Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition for just the cost of shipping and handling.

Those readers interested in Office 2008 for Mac may want to check out AppleInsider's recent Road to Mac Office 2008 series, installments of which are listed below in the order they were published.

Road to Mac Office 2008: an introduction
Road to Mac Office 2008: installation and interface
Road to Mac Office 2008: Word '08 vs Pages 3.0
Road to Mac Office 2008: Excel '08 vs Numbers 1.0
Road to Mac Office 2008: PowerPoint '08 vs Keynote 4.0
Road to Mac Office 2008: Entourage '08 vs Mail 3.0 and iCal 3.0

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[CREB]

I still use Office, but have friends that will no longer have anything to do with Microsoft. Office's pricing remains ridiculous. Since I have been dealing more with Pages, I may or may not upgrade to this version.

[Samnuva]

iWork all the way.... cheaper, more useful, easier, and MADE BY APPLE!

[k2director]

For those who are considering buying Office 2004 Student/Teacher edition now, and then taking the free upgrade to Office 2008 Special Media Edition, consider this:

1) The 2008 Special Media Edition only allows for installation on one computer, while the Student/Teacher edition allows for 3 computers. So when you get the 2008 upgrade, it's my understanding that you actually LOSE two legal licenses for other computers. (And yes, Office is smart enough to check to see if illegal installations are running on the same network, and will refuse to run.)

2) I checked the fine print on Microsoft's upgrade offer, and it says allow 6-8 weeks for delivery of your Special Media Edition upgrade. I don't know about you, but after waiting two long years for Microsoft to make a Universal Binary of Office available, I most definitely will not have the patience to wait another 6-8 weeks (potentially) for my upgrade to arrive in the mail.

[Buck]

I agree about iWork. In fact every time somebody says "...but still for serious word-processing needs Pages isn't enough" or something along those lines. I never understood what they meant. For me Pages is far far more advanced than Word. In fact had to use the newest Word with the ribbon interface on a Windows machine. It was a horrible experience! I couldn't make the line spacing right (the lines would just get cropped in half instead of shrinking the white space), found it was really hard to navigate through the ribbon to find the function I wanted and finally there was no "Save As"! I had to manually add a button to the ribbon to make such a simple operation happen. No, I'm never ever going to touch Office again. It's a beast that deserves to die along with all its disgusting proprietary formats that nobody (including Microsoft with its Mac Office) can properly decrypt. And the bottom line is that you just can't produce a document that looks neat and good and professional in Word. After using it for some time I understood the reason behind putting the zillion spaces on a line to straighten things up. You just can't do it any other way! But you can in Pages.

[dr_lha]

Originally Posted by Buck

I agree about iWork. In fact every time somebody says "...but still for serious word-processing needs Pages isn't enough" or something along those lines. I never understood what they meant.

Ever had to submit a Word Document for publication in a journal or a book? Ever had to produce a format specific galley proof from a Word Document template given to you by a publisher? No? Then Pages will be fine for you. For those of us who need to actually use a Word Processor for a living, its not up to the job sadly. This is what people mean when they say that "Pages isn't enough".

In a Word dominated world, nothing less than 100% Word compatibility will do for people who publish professionally, and Pages isn't near close enough. I know, I tried writing a journal article in Pages using a standard template provided by the publishers, and Pages just didn't get any of the margins or formatting right, so I had no choice but to revert to Word. Word is just a necessary evil I'm afraid.

Thank god most of the work I do is in LaTeX!

[bdkennedy1]

Have no use for it anymore. I don't even know any friends that use Office on the Mac.

[Foo2]

N.B. For people taking advantage of the deal, in the fine print, Microsoft says the ship date will be approx. 6-7 weeks after general availability.

[ThinkAdrian]

What about Office Business, Office Corporate and Office Ultimate Edition?

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by dr_lha

Ever had to submit a Word Document for publication in a journal or a book? Ever had to produce a format specific galley proof from a Word Document template given to you by a publisher? No? Then Pages will be fine for you. For those of us who need to actually use a Word Processor for a living, its not up to the job sadly. This is what people mean when they say that "Pages isn't enough".

In a Word dominated world, nothing less than 100% Word compatibility will do for people who publish professionally, and Pages isn't near close enough. I know, I tried writing a journal article in Pages using a standard template provided by the publishers, and Pages just didn't get any of the margins or formatting right, so I had no choice but to revert to Word. Word is just a necessary evil I'm afraid.

Thank god most of the work I do is in LaTeX!

True. then there are university students like me who love iWorks but find that everything is released in PPT and DOC format, which most of the time can be rendered ok in Pages, but a good amount of formatting is also lost in the process.

[Football]

Microsoft can f'ing bite me with that pricing. Loving Pages, bye bye Word.

[Buck]

Originally Posted by dr_lha

Ever had to submit a Word Document for publication in a journal or a book?

I'm sorry, but I always thought that *serious* publishing agencies don't rely on Word. PDF, Quark maybe... but Word? This is insane. What layouts specifically are we talking about? Seems like the margins etc stuff is universal... But I'm not trying to argue for the sake of argument, I honestly never had to submit anything in Word format, so maybe there are indeed some cases...
What that means though is not that Pages is incapable of producing better documents but rather that nobody wants to embrace open standards... Certainly the reviewers could've said that instead of the mysterious 'serious word processing'.

[Buck]

Originally Posted by kaiwai

True. then there are university students like me who love iWorks but find that everything is released in PPT and DOC format, which most of the time can be rendered ok in Pages, but a good amount of formatting is also lost in the process.

Hi Kaiwai!
Well, I feel that if nobody does anything, if nobody complains or goes against the tide, nothing will ever change. I try to do that, I still have the power. Otherwise we'd be forever stuck in the swamp that's office formats until Microsoft decides it's time for you to embrace a different format, and everyone will suck up on it, like it was made in Heaven.

[GavinScrimgeour]

kaiwai and Dr_Iha have valid points. Word or Office is a necessary evil, and many people will encounter situations where information is either given to them in a specific format, that has to be adhered i.e. no deviation from the formatting of a Word Document for the giving or receiving of documents, where iWork cannot fully guarantee compatibility.

I have a MacBook and had an iMac Intel, with boot camp installed. On Tiger I had Office 2004 (I believe) and it ran slow as hell, down to the "emulation???"

This latency made me simply use Office on the XP partition (boot camp) which ran, rightly so, very fast indeed, and left the Mac Office sitting in the dark.

Aside from Microsoft’s versions: Home, Student and the other one, we can expect a massive difference in performance, and as a result we will join the crowd of people using Office as a necessary evil, and we may even enjoy it, as you all have to admit from the screen shots, it is very appley/apple'esk!

Canny wait to see the final version.

[Lorre]

Originally Posted by dr_lha

Ever had to submit a Word Document for publication in a journal or a book? Ever had to produce a format specific galley proof from a Word Document template given to you by a publisher?

Ever tried opening a semi-advanced Word document in 4 different versions of Word? Did you see the exact same thing on your screen 4 times? I made a rather complex document in NeoOffice (I put spreadsheet tables and graphs in a word processing file, used auto numbering, background images etc.), then did some finishing touches on OO 2.2 on my dads PC, and had to print it at school using OO 2.0. Worked just fine. I blame the .odt format for that. DO the same thing with Word for Mac, Word 2000 and Word 2007 and see what I mean. Office isn't even compatible with itself...

[shanmugam]

Originally Posted by k2director

For those who are considering buying Office 2004 Student/Teacher edition now, and then taking the free upgrade to Office 2008 Special Media Edition, consider this:

1) The 2008 Special Media Edition only allows for installation on one computer, while the Student/Teacher edition allows for 3 computers. So when you get the 2008 upgrade, it's my understanding that you actually LOSE two legal licenses for other computers. (And yes, Office is smart enough to check to see if illegal installations are running on the same network, and will refuse to run.)

2) I checked the fine print on Microsoft's upgrade offer, and it says allow 6-8 weeks for delivery of your Special Media Edition upgrade. I don't know about you, but after waiting two long years for Microsoft to make a Universal Binary of Office available, I most definitely will not have the patience to wait another 6-8 weeks (potentially) for my upgrade to arrive in the mail.

actually Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition $140, you can run 3 license (with out exchange support of course, who uses exchange @ home?)

wait until Jan 15 get the 2008 if you need ...

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Offi...7415365&sr=8-1

http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01...8-mac-comp.jpg

not a bad price considering it is from m$

iWork 08 and Office X running on my mac currently ...

[GavinScrimgeour]

kaiwai and Dr_Iha have valid points. Word or Office is a necessary evil, and many people will encounter situations where information is either given to them in a specific format, that has to be adhered i.e. no deviation from the formatting of a Word Document for the giving or receiving of documents, where iWork cannot fully guarantee compatibility.

I have a MacBook and had an iMac Intel, with boot camp installed. On Tiger I had Office 2004 (I believe) and it ran slow as hell, down to the "emulation???"

This latency made me simply use Office on the XP partition (boot camp) which ran, rightly so, very fast indeed, and left the Mac Office sitting in the dark.

Aside from Microsoft’s versions: Home, Student and the other one, we can expect a massive difference in performance, and as a result we will join the crowd of people using Office as a necessary evil, and we may even enjoy it, as you all have to admit from the screen shots, it is very appley/apple'esk!

Canny wait to see the final version.

[Bageljoey]

Originally Posted by dr_lha

Thank god most of the work I do is in LaTeX!

Wow. I haven't thought about LaTeX since my Thesis in '90. It still exists??

[dr_lha]

Originally Posted by Buck

I'm sorry, but I always thought that *serious* publishing agencies don't rely on Word. PDF, Quark maybe... but Word? This is insane. What layouts specifically are we talking about? Seems like the margins etc stuff is universal... But I'm not trying to argue for the sake of argument, I honestly never had to submit anything in Word format, so maybe there are indeed some cases...
What that means though is not that Pages is incapable of producing better documents but rather that nobody wants to embrace open standards... Certainly the reviewers could've said that instead of the mysterious 'serious word processing'.

Well nobody would use Quark to write a book or a scientific paper. The issues I've had is that publishers have sent me a ".dot" Word template and told me to send them either a completed word document or a PDF file generated from that .dot file, which they use for direct publication. Opening the ".dot" file in Pages simply doesn't work, all the margins and the page size was wrong. OO2.2 would probably have done it, but given the choice between OpenOffice or Word on a Mac, the choice is pretty simple for me: Word all the way. Maybe if they make a Cocoa native version of OO (NeoOffice ain't it).

It may not make any sense that Word is an industry standard (trust me, it gives me no pleasure), but it is.

[doh123]

Originally Posted by dr_lha

Well nobody would use Quark to write a book or a scientific paper. The issues I've had is that publishers have sent me a ".dot" Word template and told me to send them either a completed word document or a PDF file generated from that .dot file, which they use for direct publication. Opening the ".dot" file in Pages simply doesn't work, all the margins and the page size was wrong. OO2.2 would probably have done it, but given the choice between OpenOffice or Word on a Mac, the choice is pretty simple for me: Word all the way. Maybe if they make a Cocoa native version of OO (NeoOffice ain't it).

It may not make any sense that Word is an industry standard (trust me, it gives me no pleasure), but it is.

I haven't tried a .dot in pages... but they always seem to work fine in NeoOffice. How is NeoOffice bad to use? Seems like you don't like it, but its been fantastic to me, and even has more compatibility with Windows MS Office than MS Office 2008 does.

[Mr. Me]

Originally Posted by Bageljoey

Wow. I haven't thought about LaTeX since my Thesis in '90. It still exists??

It's more popular than ever.

[zunx]

Obviously, Microsoft is afraid of losing market share. In fact, Microsoft Office is only maintained because there is not a true open standard. Thus, being the worst office package ever, it is the best selling one. Simply because it is the standard and people must keep compatibility as top priority. Until the day the open standards are enforced by law, as some countries are doing now quite wisely. After that Microsoft Office will be history. Afraid they are...

[bedouin]

Can anyone confirm if Office 2008 supports Arabic or not?

[teckstud]

Seriously, does anyone know of any company that uses Numbers '08? LOL

[AtomicGarden]

Since the iPhone (at the latest) Apple became another Microsoft anyway, so we can use MS Office on our Macs as well... Apart from that, Office is quite a decent suite - at least Word is a good program... Eventually I might switch to Open Office, but lets face it guys - Pages just sucks a** ! Steve Jobs, don't try to take on everything, you can only loose...

[dr_lha]

Originally Posted by doh123

I haven't tried a .dot in pages... but they always seem to work fine in NeoOffice. How is NeoOffice bad to use? Seems like you don't like it, but its been fantastic to me, and even has more compatibility with Windows MS Office than MS Office 2008 does.

Well my work gives me Office 2004 "for free" (they pay for it of course, but I don't have to), so there is no real compelling reason for me to use NeoOffice. I can't say the same for something like Keynote, which is genuinely better than Powerpoint, so much so that I bought it out of my own pocket to use for work. Pages hasn't reached that point where it can replace Word sadly, I hope it will in future, but for now I'm stuck with Word.

Oh, and to be honest I've found NeoOffice to be slow and the user interface is clunky, but if you want a free Office clone, its great.

[internetworld7]

Originally Posted by k2director

For those who are considering buying Office 2004 Student/Teacher edition now, and then taking the free upgrade to Office 2008 Special Media Edition, consider this:

1) The 2008 Special Media Edition only allows for installation on one computer, while the Student/Teacher edition allows for 3 computers. So when you get the 2008 upgrade, it's my understanding that you actually LOSE two legal licenses for other computers. (And yes, Office is smart enough to check to see if illegal installations are running on the same network, and will refuse to run.)

2) I checked the fine print on Microsoft's upgrade offer, and it says allow 6-8 weeks for delivery of your Special Media Edition upgrade. I don't know about you, but after waiting two long years for Microsoft to make a Universal Binary of Office available, I most definitely will not have the patience to wait another 6-8 weeks (potentially) for my upgrade to arrive in the mail.

You can't be serious. Please tell me you are joking Hopefully you can somehow get those two years back that you were waiting on Microsoft to make a universal binary of Office available but in the meantime, there is NeoOffice which is FAAAAARRRRRR better than Microsoft Office 2004 or 2008. It's a full Office sutie that is completely native on a Mac and FREE!

I've used Office on a PC for years and other Office programs and nothing comes close to NeoOffice on a Mac. NeoOffice is based on OpenOffice but doesn't require x11. If you haven't tried the new version that was released last October, I recommend you download it asap. You'll love it.

[internetworld7]

Originally Posted by dr_lha

Well my work gives me Office 2004 "for free" (they pay for it of course, but I don't have to), so there is no real compelling reason for me to use NeoOffice. I can't say the same for something like Keynote, which is genuinely better than Powerpoint, so much so that I bought it out of my own pocket to use for work. Pages hasn't reached that point where it can replace Word sadly, I hope it will in future, but for now I'm stuck with Word.

Oh, and to be honest I've found NeoOffice to be slow and the user interface is clunky, but if you want a free Office clone, its great.

Apparently you haven't used the most recent version (2.2.2) which has a redesigned UI that is completely integrated with the Aqua environment on a Mac and is anything but slow on my Mac. Personally I find the UI to be very organized and visually pleasing. The newest version was released October 10th, 2007, just 31 days ago.

[internetworld7]

Originally Posted by bedouin

Can anyone confirm if Office 2008 supports Arabic or not?

Previous versions of Office for the Mac has not but NeoOffice does. It's much better integrated on a Mac and free. If you haven't used this, I highly recommend you visit the site and download it. You'll love it. Small learning curve but it's well worth it.

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by Buck

Hi Kaiwai!
Well, I feel that if nobody does anything, if nobody complains or goes against the tide, nothing will ever change. I try to do that, I still have the power. Otherwise we'd be forever stuck in the swamp that's office formats until Microsoft decides it's time for you to embrace a different format, and everyone will suck up on it, like it was made in Heaven.

What is wrong with that? right now, if more people use Office 2008, and more people move to Mac, they'll have no choice but to continue to support - an expand support for Apple Mac's. Its a win for 'team Mac' if it gains more marketshare.

[dr_lha]

Originally Posted by internetworld7

Apparently you haven't used the most recent version (2.2.2) which has a redesigned UI that is completely integrated with the Aqua environment on a Mac and is anything but slow on my Mac. Personally I find the UI to be very organized and visually pleasing. The newest version was released October 10th, 2007, just 31 days ago.

Cool, I'll check it out, although the screenshots on their website still look the same as the last version I tried. That said, I still don't think there's any compelling reason to use it if I already have Office 2004.

[TerrinB]

Come on! Pages far more advanced then Word? Feature by feature, Pages is no comparison to Word. Do not get me wrong, Pages is more then useful, is laid out nice, comes with some nice templates, and may be a deal for the price. However, Word is simply more feature rich and is going to be more useful for people who actually have to share documents with Windows users. Moreover, you are comparing a new Pages to a several year old version of Word. Word 2008 is probably the strongest new product in Office 2008 and in my view offers some great improvements over Word 2004. I am not a Microsoft fan, but let us at least be honest and give the devil its due.

Finally, does anyone actually think Apple is really trying to compete with Microsoft Office? Apple is offering a basic Office suite for those who do not need the full featured Office. It is not going all out because it doesn't want to piss Microsoft off, as it needs Office to work on the Mac to be considered a legitimate platform. It could have made all of the programs in iWork as strong as Keynote, but it didn't. You will see when Office 2008 comes out, Apple will help Microsoft promote it as it did Office 2004.

Originally Posted by Buck

I agree about iWork. In fact every time somebody says "...but still for serious word-processing needs Pages isn't enough" or something along those lines. I never understood what they meant. For me Pages is far far more advanced than Word. In fact had to use the newest Word with the ribbon interface on a Windows machine. It was a horrible experience! I couldn't make the line spacing right (the lines would just get cropped in half instead of shrinking the white space), found it was really hard to navigate through the ribbon to find the function I wanted and finally there was no "Save As"! I had to manually add a button to the ribbon to make such a simple operation happen. No, I'm never ever going to touch Office again. It's a beast that deserves to die along with all its disgusting proprietary formats that nobody (including Microsoft with its Mac Office) can properly decrypt. And the bottom line is that you just can't produce a document that looks neat and good and professional in Word. After using it for some time I understood the reason behind putting the zillion spaces on a line to straighten things up. You just can't do it any other way! But you can in Pages.

[TerrinB]

I didn't love it. It is far slower then Office. Often I would see the spinning Rainbow wheel. Moreover, it has compatibility with Office issues.

Originally Posted by internetworld7

Previous versions of Office for the Mac has not but NeoOffice does. It's much better integrated on a Mac and free. If you haven't used this, I highly recommend you visit the site and download it. You'll love it. Small learning curve but it's well worth it.

[TerrinB]

First, I have nothing against NeoOffice. I am glad it is out there and it is a good option for people on a budget. However, it's biggest strength is it is free. It is very similar to Office 2004 because it is essentially a copy. However, it is far slower then Office 2004 ( even running in Rosette) because it is a Java application. Moreover, it isn't able to properly convert complex Microsoft Office documents. Second, Office 2008 is better then NeoOffice in terms of usability because it is designed better and is a true Mac application (not one based on Java).

Supporting open source is cool, but I doubt many people would find NeoOffice better then Office 2008.

Originally Posted by internetworld7

You can't be serious. Please tell me you are joking Hopefully you can somehow get those two years back that you were waiting on Microsoft to make a universal binary of Office available but in the meantime, there is NeoOffice which is FAAAAARRRRRR better than Microsoft Office 2004 or 2008. It's a full Office sutie that is completely native on a Mac and FREE!

I've used Office on a PC for years and other Office programs and nothing comes close to NeoOffice on a Mac. NeoOffice is based on OpenOffice but doesn't require x11. If you haven't tried the new version that was released last October, I recommend you download it asap. You'll love it.

[TerrinB]

It might not be bad to use for your purposes. However, when my Office needs a document typed and they use Word, I have to be able to produce a document that will look pretty much the same on my computer as theirs. Programs like NeoOffice and Pages generally do a pretty poor job of retaining formatting when creating an Office document. In truth, formatting can be a little off between Microsoft programs, but it is far more accurate then the competition.

You cannot blame the competition for not being able to create perfect Office files, as Microsoft uses a proprietary standard. However, that doesn't change the fact I have to share documents that look the same across platforms. Printing to PDf solves the problem sometimes, but others it does not (e.g. when somebody else wants to work on the document or insists on opening the document in Word).

Originally Posted by doh123

I haven't tried a .dot in pages... but they always seem to work fine in NeoOffice. How is NeoOffice bad to use? Seems like you don't like it, but its been fantastic to me, and even has more compatibility with Windows MS Office than MS Office 2008 does.

[Mr. Me]

Originally Posted by kaiwai

... right now, if more people use Office 2008, and more people move to Mac, they'll have no choice but to continue to support - an expand support for Apple Mac's. ...

Fairy tales can come true,
It can happen to you
If you're young at heart...

from Walt Disney's Peter Pan

I'll allow that there are a subset of Office users who rely on the more obscure features of the Microsoft suite. However, the vast majority do not. They use Word strictly as a word processor. They create and read simple spreadsheets in Excel. They do the occasional presentation in PowerPoint. They may use Entourage to access their Exchange server. However, they can't manage their accounts with Entourage because Entourage can't manage Exchange accounts. Documents exchanged between Windows and Mac versions of Office apps may require format tweaking.

The point is that there is no such thing as 100% compatibility between any two different versions of a Microsoft app, irrespective of platform. Text Edit, Pages, NeoOffice, and other non-Redmond applications do fantastic jobs of handling Word files. NeoOffice handles .docx out-of-the-box, something that Word 2004 cannot do. Of the majority who require "100%-compatibility," that need is encapsulated in VBA macros. However, Office 2008 does not include VBA. This means that the new Office suite is a placebo. You have better, less expensive, alternatives.

[doh123]

Originally Posted by TerrinB

First, I have nothing against NeoOffice. I am glad it is out there and it is a good option for people on a budget. However, it's biggest strength is it is free. It is very similar to Office 2004 because it is essentially a copy. However, it is far slower then Office 2004 ( even running in Rosette) because it is a Java application. Moreover, it isn't able to properly convert complex Microsoft Office documents. Second, Office 2008 is better then NeoOffice in terms of usability because it is designed better and is a true Mac application (not one based on Java).

Supporting open source is cool, but I doubt many people would find NeoOffice better then Office 2008.

I find NeoOffice better to use than MS Office. I've been using it and OpenOffice for a few years, and have ever had 1 format problem with .doc files, and it happend the same on MS Office v.X i had at the time (before 2004 was out). I'm not sure what you was running to get it slower than MS Office in Rosetta. NeoOffice is not a Universal app, there are 2 versions, for PPC and x86. maybe you tried the PPC version and it was running under Rosetta? I have MS Office 2004, and keep it installed for some reason (thinking i just might need it sometime, but havent). It runs a fraction of the speed that NeoOffice runs. NeoOffice might use Java for the UI, but it doesn't run any slower than OpenOffice does under X11.

Oh, I don't have some bias against Java either.. maybe because I'm a Java programmer... but saying its Java and not native is a load. Thats as bad as the people screaming about macs only have 1 mouse button.

[Hassan i Sabbah]

I write for a living and have to deliver Word documents. I've always used Word with all the functions I don't need turned off, but I really need the functions I do need.

Two days ago I switched to Pages. I'm trying it out.

-It renders text on the screen infinitely better than Word.
-The way I use the interface, it's identical to Word (I just lose the button strip, and substitute the inspector for the formatting palette) and this is good
-It's faster.
-It's nicer and less annoying.

But.

-There's a bug in the hyphenation concerning words that contain punctuation marks
-The way it handles images is irritating because you can't set preferences (you can't just drag an image in without telling the document every time how you want it, in my case, to behave like text)
-You can't use auto-correct to replace words with formatted text
and
-Its document display options are rubbish: I don't want a left ruler and I don't want my document to suddenly turn into my desktop on the left margin either.

It just isn't as powerful as Word. It's better in so many ways, but it's just doesn't have the cojones.

I'm using it now to see if it's better to actually use being so, so much less irritating, but when I finish my project I'll have to export it to Word and tweak it for delivery anyway. But it's a big project. So i imagine it'll be worth it.

[knightlie]

Originally Posted by TerrinB

Supporting open source is cool, but I doubt many people would find NeoOffice better then Office 2008.

NeoOffice is more usable than Office, for me at least. There's a big different between "better" and "more usable."

I'll get iWork, Office is just overkill for me and looks truly awful. And if MS have wrapped up development, that means that it's only half finished...

[macrazy]

Originally Posted by internetworld7

Apparently you haven't used the most recent version (2.2.2) which has a redesigned UI that is completely integrated with the Aqua environment on a Mac and is anything but slow on my Mac. Personally I find the UI to be very organized and visually pleasing. The newest version was released October 10th, 2007, just 31 days ago.

I am getting myself a Macbook on Jan 15th (I am a switcher from Windows) - and yes, after a lot of research - I had decided long ago to go with NeoOffice... no point switching if I am still dependent on Mr. Gates, eh? ....