Office 2008 for Mac SP2 improves speed and stability - Page 2

I got 2008 because it has better Exchange support (although it's still not very good). I very rarely use any of the other products. When iWork doesn't suffice (which is very rare), I use NeoOffice.


Perhaps not, but I do. I've used both (all three if you count the Windows versions), a lot. You can love Word all you want, but I instantly took to Pages and find it far more capable for page layouts. As for half the features, who cares when 90% of the features in Word aren't used by 90% of people. There are only two things missing from Pages that Word has that I miss: mail-merge to email and document forms (which is handled very poorly on the Mac version anyway). For those I use Word. For everything else I use Pages.

Keynote blows PowerPoint away in nearly every way imaginable. The only thing I can think of that's missing from Keynote is the ability for embedded charts to update themselves. Otherwise, creating presentations takes far longer in PowerPoint due to the need to open up multiple dialogs for transitions, where everything can be handled more easily on Keynote with its inspector.

Numbers creates much more attractive looking charts, but I do admit to it being very slow, particularly in how it handles large spreadsheets (and by large, I mean anything over about 100 rows). Apple *really* needs to tackle performance before it can be a serious competitor. It also lacks database connectivity to have its charts update automatically.

Pages & Numbers are a different approach to handling documents and spreadsheets. Keynote is a better solution than PowerPoint for many people. Openoffice works fine on the Mac as it is. Why would Apple be curtailed by the legacy mindset of a tool that mimics Microsoft office except for the document format? It is a community driven effort, let it remain so. One thing Apple can do is to ensure that the document formats are published and provide full support for open office documents.

Innovation is required for all of the applications you find in today's office suites. If people stopped re-inventing text editors, you wouldn't have TextMate or any of the other successful and relatively new text editors.

Talking about YAWP, have you tried IBM Lotus Symphony? It is based on the OO core code base and it is built on top of Eclipse (the popular developer IDE). Lacks some of the nice features of OO, but the UI is much better and polished.

[QUOTE=bsenka;1451599]
IMHO, NeoOffice works better than Open Office.

Just installed the update. I'm unsure what people's expectations of "snappy load time"s are but just timed Word and it must have taken 20 seconds from clicking the icon to opening up. Word on my old PC at work launches in about 5 seconds? So much for progress.

Is there any report of improvements using Entourage with Exchange Server?

1) Installed SP2.
2) Opened three files in Word.
3) Word mixed the text and figures of the third file with the other two. And saved it.
4) <sigh>
5) Check Mozy backup.
6) Realize Mozy's backup for some reason didn't back up the file for the past few months even though daily/weekly backups were made.
7) Thank the Lord that Apple makes Timemachine and restored file.

Well, at least the SP2 makes Word open and scroll faster.

What sort of improvements were you looking for? I've not experienced any reliability issues myself. It would be great if they finally offered more than limited, rudimentary HTML formatting, but alas nothing has changed there...

It's hard to tell whether the problems we've experienced at my company are the fault of Entourage or with our IT department's implementation of Exchange Server, but Entourage users have experienced lost or delayed emails that Outlook users don't experience (they have other problems).

Two things keeping me from iWork

1. No RTL support
2. No ODT support

Be careful with this update if you use a site-licensed version of Office.

My installation came from a University site-licence CD, and since applying SP2 I can no longer run any of my office apps.

I just get a pop-up message saying "Office for Mac has determined that your product key is not valid. To use Office for Mac, you must enter a valid product key."

The install disc I used had they key pre-filled, and I don't have it written down anywhere. Now I need to wait for tech services to get back to me, but they'll just have the same key, unless Microsoft has sent a new one.

Pain in the arse!

Bah.

Microsoft dang you! I want a messenger that will let me do video chats with other Windows Live users.

* And no guys, there's no chance I'll get the other people to use a different messaging application.

FWIW, I've never experienced that myself, not with Entourage 2004 or 2008. My messages don't always come in instantaneously the way they do in Outlook (although the lag is usually no more than a minute or two at most), but that's a symptom of Entourage's Exchange connectivity.