Office 2008 is driving me back to windows

a_greer · April 5, 2008 10:00PM

Office 2008, and Excel in particulat, are so god awfull in terms of usability and speed, and the ui is overbearingly difficult, that I am thinking of giving up my Macbook and going back to Windows, which I stopped using at home in early 2005: Is MS planning to fix this turd of an Office release or what?

I live in Office lately as I am going back to school, and to spend 99% of my time in a VM using 2007 on windows because the Mac one is unusablegoing back and forth for email and web is absurd...is there any indication of fixes in the pipeline for excel 2008s speed and pissy UI?

Am I the only one who choaks excel with a 9-data-point chart?

kickaha · April 5, 2008 10:12PM

Q: Do you *NEED* Office? Do you need to be able to share documents for collaborative editing, where formatting and such are important?

Or do you distribute finished documents more frequently?

mydo · April 5, 2008 11:09PM

Just do what I do. Use BootCamp or Parallels or VM Ware or whatever.

After reading the comments here I never "upgraded" my Mac OS Office and I'm glad I didn't.

akac · April 5, 2008 11:56PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_greer

Office 2008, and Excel in particulat, are so god awfull in terms of usability and speed, and the ui is overbearingly difficult, that I am thinking of giving up my Macbook and going back to Windows, which I stopped using at home in early 2005: Is MS planning to fix this turd of an Office release or what?

I live in Office lately as I am going back to school, and to spend 99% of my time in a VM using 2007 on windows because the Mac one is unusablegoing back and forth for email and web is absurd...is there any indication of fixes in the pipeline for excel 2008s speed and pissy UI?

Am I the only one who choaks excel with a 9-data-point chart?

Why not use Pages and Numbers? OK Numbers is a bit weak, but frankly I use Pages instead of Word and have no need to ever open Word anymore. And I do very heavy work in Pages.

rob05au · April 6, 2008 2:24AM

Why not even use Neo Office it can handle most of what Office 2008 does and without most of its hassles to boot.

I agree pages is rather good also.

Marvin · April 6, 2008 6:05AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_greer

I am thinking of giving up my Macbook and going back to Windows

Why do people say that so often? You are giving up a Macbook, which can run Windows natively and in fact better than PC laptops in order to run Windows?

I agree with you that Office for the Mac absolutely sucks and I understand the problem of not wanting to run a VM for even basic office work so what I would recommend you do is run Office 2003 or 2007 inside Crossover.

No VM, no booting Windows and you save direct to the Mac filesystem.

http://www.codeweavers.com/images/pr..._mac_visio.png

It's not perfect and I've found the application compatibility to be quite low but if it's just Office, it might be worth a try.

a_greer · April 6, 2008 8:41AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvin

Why do people say that so often? You are giving up a Macbook, which can run Windows natively and in fact better than PC laptops in order to run Windows?

I agree with you that Office for the Mac absolutely sucks and I understand the problem of not wanting to run a VM for even basic office work so what I would recommend you do is run Office 2003 or 2007 inside Crossover.

No VM, no booting Windows and you save direct to the Mac filesystem.

http://www.codeweavers.com/images/pr..._mac_visio.png

It's not perfect and I've found the application compatibility to be quite low but if it's just Office, it might be worth a try.

My Mac only has 2 USB ports, no card slot, no thumbprint readre, no tablet capability, a screen that oly tilts to 130 degrees, no option for integrated WWAN broadband...

All features that I can get in a roughly $1100 laptop, weighing about 4 pounds...so ye, the Macbook isnt quite the hardware picnic that everyone claims that it is...

akac · April 6, 2008 1:40PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_greer

My Mac only has 2 USB ports, no card slot, no thumbprint readre, no tablet capability, a screen that oly tilts to 130 degrees, no option for integrated WWAN broadband...

All features that I can get in a roughly $1100 laptop, weighing about 4 pounds...so ye, the Macbook isnt quite the hardware picnic that everyone claims that it is...

I never advocate the MB ad a hardware picnic. I don't care for it myself, since I need those features. Its why I got a MacBook Pro. Yes, its more expensive but honestly the quality demands it.

I've owned cheap PC laptops. They are just that - cheap. I owned Sager, Dell, Compaq. I've had locally built ones. There is a world of difference. There is a lot of foundation to the fact that I can buy a car for $12000 with the same "features" as my $50k BMW. But let me tell you, that $50k BMW shows its worth every time you drive it for years. The same with Macs. They cost about the same as comparative quality Dell, IBM, and Sony laptops. I can get the near exact same specs Dell for $500 or $2000. Why the difference? Quality.

And yeah, Apple isn't a picnic on quality either - sometimes they don't do so well. But after owning all these different brands (yes, I buy laptops like a fat kid buys chips) and using them heavily I can say that the MacBook Pros are the best I've had.

backtomac · April 6, 2008 7:32PM

Funny, the thread started out about the shortcomings of MS office 2008 for the Mac. But now has morphed into the shortcomings of the Macbook.

This will be an xMac thread by page 2.

mr. me · April 6, 2008 8:14PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by backtomac

Funny, the thread started out about the shortcomings of MS office 2008 for the Mac. ...

Not so funny. Reread the OP. You will see that he was kvetching about the Mac as much as he was kvetching about Office 2008.

tenobell · April 7, 2008 12:01PM

Quote:

My Mac only has 2 USB ports, no card slot, no thumbprint readre, no tablet capability, a screen that oly tilts to 130 degrees, no option for integrated WWAN broadband...

All features that I can get in a roughly $1100 laptop, weighing about 4 pounds...so ye, the Macbook isnt quite the hardware picnic that everyone claims that it is...

You also have to look at it from the big picture. What number of people are actually using or need card slots, thumbprint readers, tablets, WWAN, or a screen that tilts more than 130 degrees.

Apples healthy growth in sales and revenue seem to suggest a good number of people who don't require these functions.

telomar · April 12, 2008 12:45AM

For me it became very simple when they removed VBA from Office 2008 I ceased to use the Mac version of office. I simply could no longer use it and I think that's a very sad state.

That said I've found VMWare very good with Office 2007 but I am still appalled at the lack of support now for people with more advanced needs in spreadsheets on the mac.

guinness · April 13, 2008 11:08AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telomar

For me it became very simple when they removed VBA from Office 2008 I ceased to use the Mac version of office. I simply could no longer use it and I think that's a very sad state.

That said I've found VMWare very good with Office 2007 but I am still appalled at the lack of support now for people with more advanced needs in spreadsheets on the mac.

It's to keep OSX out of the enterprise/business world, partly due to MS and Apple.

For MS, it just makes good business sense to cripple Mac Office - there is no Mac Access either. And as for Apple, I can't even do things like importing from external data sources into Numbers. Sure, I could use OOo or NeoOffice, but OOo looks a heck of lot better on Linux or Windows, and if I just needed a decent, free MS Office alternative, I would go that route over OSX.

Maybe Apple can throw some of that profit of theirs, at creating a real business Office-type app.

Outside of that thought, I just love Office 2007, I don't do any VBA, but I use Excel/Access/SQL Server all the time, and it just makes it a lot easier on me, to stick with Windows and its Office, than to fight with the alternatives sometimes.

aquatic · April 13, 2008 3:18PM

I have to say, Office 2008 is so slow it is almost useless. It must be intentional. It's slower than 2004. That's just plain nuts. It's slow on brand-new top-of-the-line systems. And I agree, Excel is a piece of junk. 2008 is certainly a downgrade from 2004, which now that I think of it was not much different from 2001.

I'm interested in seeing what happens with CrossOver. I may end up switching from Mac Office 2008 to Win Office 2003 in CrossOver.

tonton · April 13, 2008 7:19PM

Last week a Microsoft executive admitted to deliberately "annoying" users with the UAC in Vista, to "discourage" them from using an admin account. Is there any doubt in people's minds that Microsoft deliberately made Mac Office slow to "discourage" them from using OS X? Yet you fools are going back to Windows? Go back to Office 2004. It runs beautifully on my Macbook.

aplnub · April 13, 2008 9:09PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_greer

My Mac only has 2 USB ports, no card slot, no thumbprint readre, no tablet capability, a screen that oly tilts to 130 degrees, no option for integrated WWAN broadband...

All features that I can get in a roughly $1100 laptop, weighing about 4 pounds...so ye, the Macbook isnt quite the hardware picnic that everyone claims that it is...

It all the other software that drove me to Apple.

AG, it is not like you bought the MB under cloak and dagger hardware spec's. Did you not read the box, the product card in the store, the website page about the MB when you bought it? Let's get in the real world where people actually know what they are getting when they fork over more than a a grand in cash.

Now, have you tried the Open Office Development version?

If you need Excel and you have a MB, your choices are clear. Deal with it, sale your computer, bootcamp, or virtualize (VMWare).

I want to add I have a new MB and running Office 08, Windows on VMWare, along with several other programs Nisus Pro, Mail, Address Book, etc. at the same time and I have no problems with speed from the OS. 08 is a bit slow, well, slower than 04, but i wasn't like we didn't know this going in unless you purchased your copy of Mac Office the day it was released.

Office 2008 is driving me back to windows

Comments