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Should you upgrade to the new Mac Office?

1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic (by 0 people)   Your rating: 1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic

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The Macintosh Office Suite is ready

Should you upgrade?

Here's the low-priced edition 

Which is just about all you need

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition

Amazon Price: $121.99 (as of 10/06/2008)

Here's what Amazon says:
* Office 2008 is a Universal Binary

* Office 2008 uses Open XML file formats. XML file formats help reduce the risk of lost information due to damaged or corrupted files and also result in smaller file sizes

* Elements Gallery is the foundation of the new user interface, and gives easy access to the most commonly used tools and templates.

* Office 2008 includes OfficeArt, the powerful graphics engine also used in the Windows-based Office 2007 products.

* Your words will make an impact with the modern styling of SmartArt graphics, which makes transforming text and bulleted lists into professional diagrams and graphics one-click easy.

* A new Themes capability simplifies the process of applying a consistent look and feel across documents.

But now there's competition

It used to be that you HAD to use Office. Now, it's one of many options.

But you could get Nisus for less 

Nisus
Nisus is faster, easier to use and a great deal more powerful, especially if you need to do advanced search and replace. You can save files in Word-friendly RFT format and open them as well.

Track Changes, though, is a problem.

Google Docs 

Consider the free alternative

Google Docs
Docs is getting more and more powerful daily. It's free. It's easy to share. You can work in groups and never have to worry about backups.

It's clearly not as powerful as Office, but every day, it's getting closer. And don't forget that most of the features of Office never ever get used.

It's also work considering iWork 

Mac friendly, through and through

iWork
It's not free, but it's very powerful and does most of what you need. I actually prefer Keynote over Powerpoint. And the charts in Numbers really are spectacular.

I'll admit to not liking Pages so much. I think it's just too awkward for word processing.

Your turn--yes or no on spending the money on the upgrade? 

Is it worth the time and money for Office?

Loading Fetching blurbs now... please stand by

Yes, Steve Ballmer needs the money

No, better to do a Mac or Web solution

Mac Wizard says:

Office 2008 is CRAP!

• Office 2008 runs SLOWER THAN 2004 on non-intel machines.
• The apps take too long to load compared to the older version.
• They save to xml format by default, making it more difficult to share documents with other people who may not have an up-to-date version or the conversion tool. (To be fair, this default behavior can be changed in preferences).
• They make poor use of screen real estate with those new tabs at the top of each window.
• The icons are ugly.
• All benefits are completely negated by the poor quality of the applications.
• No Visual Basic support;
• limited support for AppleScript and Automator;
• Formatting Palette may outgrow even large screens;
• scroll wheels don’t work in Formatting Palette.

Bill Gates says:

no, don't buy my shitty app !

 
 
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