I'm planning on getting a MB and i want to run MS Office. I was wondering how MS Office runs on a MacBook with Rosetta and all because I heard horror stories about it on Mac Minis. I want to know how it does on 512MB of RAM and 1GB of RAM. Thanks
The entire Office 2004 suite seems to run fine on my Macbook. After a Macbook restart, it takes about 10 seconds for Word to launch. After that, if I quit and relaunch Word, it launches almost instantly. So, Rosetta is working well.
As far as speed is concerned, well, you're inputting text and the cursor keeps up with you. Speed is fine. However, the bugs in Office are still present. For example, if you delete a block of text, Word just sits there for up to five seconds just thinking about the deletion unless you move your mouse a bit... Dunno why.
Well, running WORD under Rosetta with only 512 MB is pretty bad. I don't know if there are any free word processors out there that are Universal Binaries, but if so they should run fine with 512 MB.
WORD was always slow, though. Even on my old ibook G4.
The KC Apple Store has 768MB on their MacBooks and Office seems to work fine in my time testing it out.
Of course, we are going to put 2gigs in my son's college machine so it shouldn't be a problem at all.
OOo is a great utility for a college student for one simple reason: backwords usability/all around compatibility
Sometimes Word has problems with older Word files, or files from a newer version: OOo can in my experiance open anything made in Word 97,98(Mac classic),2000,2001(mac Classic),2002(AKA office XP), X(MacOS X native), 2003, 2004(osx current) as well as Wordperfect, and other lesser used apps, so nearly any obscure file a teacher or peer may provide, he can read and convert to any of OOos readable formats, or rendered as a PDF (OSX has the functionality, but so does OOo on any platform).
I don't know about you agreer, but I have always found Mac Word to open everything perfectly, and save in a way that other Word versions just opens. And they work. EXCEPT one GLARING, HUGE flaw. HUGE. Dumb friggin PCs don't seem to be able to open PICTURES half the time, whining that they need QuickTime and a TIFF de-compressor. They're just freakin jpegs usually. When I make them bmp I think that was the fix I used. Anyway the PCs even had the latest QuickTime, Office, and XP. So dumb. But of course, that's Windows Office's fault. Mac Office is pretty decent.
by the way, anyone know an app that can select a few pages out of a document and make them horizontal in layout, but most remain vertical? And do this without taking an hour to re-space pictures, or at least, make respacing easier than Word makes it? So far only Word can do this. It doesn't seem Pages or Mellel can change the Page Layout of particular pages. Which is kind of ridiculous. Unless I'm missing something. Thanks!
Yeah, Office for Windows often has problems with certain image types. This is even more noticeable in PowerPoint, where the Mac version enjoys using QuickTime, which makes the Windows version bail.
But I don't remember having trouble opening any word files, no matter the antiquity, with Mac Office.
A lot of my problems were going the other way; Word 2004 to 2003, it aint pretty, but a quick open/save/exit in OOo fixes it every time for me.
RANT:
This is one thing that kinda ticks me off; I make a document in Word 2004:Mac, open it on Word 2003 in XP and the fonts are differant...the blocks line up differantly in 2000, there are 10 million other quirks too, and lots of places will demand resume submittions in .doc and not be open to taking PDFs...why?!?!? Is this not exactly the sort of thing PDF was designed to do?
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As far as speed is concerned, well, you're inputting text and the cursor keeps up with you. Speed is fine. However, the bugs in Office are still present. For example, if you delete a block of text, Word just sits there for up to five seconds just thinking about the deletion unless you move your mouse a bit... Dunno why.
God, I hate Word.
You actually get frustrated with the rate of speed it puts out, personally for me it's not usuable at all.
When upgraded to 1.25G of RAM, it's a whole different story.
The Office runs as if it runs on PPC, what a drastic change a mere 1G of RAM makes to the whole performance.
If you're planning to use alot of MS Office, memory upgrade is not a choice but a must!!
Boom! I popped in 2 GB RAM (not for office but for Final Cut Studio) and it runs fine now. It's not fast mind you, but it's useable.
WORD was always slow, though. Even on my old ibook G4.
Originally posted by bookmac
don't know if there are any free word processors out there that are Universal Binaries,
Neooffice intel alpha is $10, but hey, MS Word aint free...
If you dont mind x11, you can run the real OOo on Intel or PPC Macs
Of course, we are going to put 2gigs in my son's college machine so it shouldn't be a problem at all.
Originally posted by kcmac
The KC Apple Store has 768MB on their MacBooks and Office seems to work fine in my time testing it out.
Of course, we are going to put 2gigs in my son's college machine so it shouldn't be a problem at all.
OOo is a great utility for a college student for one simple reason: backwords usability/all around compatibility
Sometimes Word has problems with older Word files, or files from a newer version: OOo can in my experiance open anything made in Word 97,98(Mac classic),2000,2001(mac Classic),2002(AKA office XP), X(MacOS X native), 2003, 2004(osx current) as well as Wordperfect, and other lesser used apps, so nearly any obscure file a teacher or peer may provide, he can read and convert to any of OOos readable formats, or rendered as a PDF (OSX has the functionality, but so does OOo on any platform).
by the way, anyone know an app that can select a few pages out of a document and make them horizontal in layout, but most remain vertical? And do this without taking an hour to re-space pictures, or at least, make respacing easier than Word makes it? So far only Word can do this. It doesn't seem Pages or Mellel can change the Page Layout of particular pages. Which is kind of ridiculous. Unless I'm missing something. Thanks!
But I don't remember having trouble opening any word files, no matter the antiquity, with Mac Office.
Originally posted by kcmac
But I don't remember having trouble opening any word files, no matter the antiquity, with Mac Office.
A lot of my problems were going the other way; Word 2004 to 2003, it aint pretty, but a quick open/save/exit in OOo fixes it every time for me.
RANT:
This is one thing that kinda ticks me off; I make a document in Word 2004:Mac, open it on Word 2003 in XP and the fonts are differant...the blocks line up differantly in 2000, there are 10 million other quirks too, and lots of places will demand resume submittions in .doc and not be open to taking PDFs...why?!?!? Is this not exactly the sort of thing PDF was designed to do?