Microsoft Office v. X for Mac
by Microsoft Software
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Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Microsoft Office v. X for Mac
Customer Review: A must for powerusers, not needed by the rest of us
Summary: 3 Stars
Office is far and away the best thing Microsoft does, and probably the main reason for their dominance in the software industry. The Mac OS X version of Office is generally regarded as superior to the Windows version, so this is the very best version of all. Having used a trial version for a month, I have to admit that it is in many respects very impressive. Although it occassionally misbehaves, for the most part it works splendidly with the OS X operating system. The interface is very nice: it looks better even than Apple's office suite, Appleworks. It does sometimes hog a little more CPU when it's open but not being used, but that's typical of 3rd party carbon ports.Despite the many fine qualities of his app, I cannot give it a complete endorsement. I suspect that many people buy MS Office because of its prestige and its dominance in the market, not because they necessarily need it. If you rarely use spreadsheet, don't really need to make presentations, and don't need all the extra features of MS Word, then you don't need this application. Excel and Powerpoint are industry standards. If you're in business and you need such things, those are the ones to have. If you're not, you don't really need them. The spreadsheet and presentation program that comes with Appleworks will do fine. (Or if you don't have Appleworks, install XDarwin and use gnumeric or KOffice for free.) As for MS Word, well, to tell the truth, I prefer the Appleworks: it's simply easier to use. In all the times I've used Appleworks, I've never had to go to the help browser to figure out how to accomplish something. With MS Word, even a simple task such as changing or realligning paragraphs requires a visit to the annoying little help box. While I recognize the awesome power of the program, I just don't need anything quite that sophisticated. I suspect that there are a number of people out there who shell out the big bucks for MS Word or Office but who don't really need its power. There's no reason for that. Nor is there any reason to buy it just so you can open us MS Word documents. Appleworks, Abiword, and OpenOffice will open all but the most sophisticated word docs. As for those they can't open, well, let's face it: Mac and Linux users really need to begin putting pressure on people to send documents in file types that use open standards, like rtf and PDF. There's no reason why non-Windows users should cooperate in extending Microsoft's dominance in the market.
Customer Review: Mediocrity Rules the office
Summary: 2 Stars
Microsoft has run every other major player out of the Mac Office market, and so why should they sweat it? Most Mac users need Office because they're outnumbered by Windoze machines at work and have to be able to read files generated by these apps... don't get me started. If we ever needed an example of why open, non-proprietary standards are important, you need look no further than office.Excel is actually a pretty decent spreadsheet, but it has some deficiencies. For example, the default templates don't work with imported files, like HTML or Filemaker tables. People overuse Excel, and spreadsheets in general.
Word is an aggressively mediocre word processor, and isn't really suited for serious technical publication - use Adobe Framemaker for that. It's Ok for little memos, letters and suchlike. It would be better if people used it right - for example, using styles to designate space before a paragraph instead of hiting retrun to insert a blank line....
Powerpoint is an inhuman curse. Years ago, Symantec had an app called "More" that far superior, but the usual herd mentality favored Powerpoint. Get rid of Powerpoint and productivity would go up across the board. In fact, get rid of 90% of viewgraphs and the associated chartsmanship that clouds our communications so badly.
Entourage is a good idea in broad concept, but is very poorly executed, won't synch with PDAs properly, and doesn't really interoperate with Exchange and Outlook as promised. It's very buggy and its junk mail filter isn't adaptable and doesn't really work at all (uss SpamSieve if you're stuck with Entourage, or switch to the OS 10.2 Apple mail app, which has a kickin' spam filter). Its support of Applescript is poor, and it fails to empty its trash when asked to do so. For some reason, you can't schedule the application of rules. Many other deficiencies.
Unfortunately, there aren't many alternatives to Office on the Mac. OpenOffice is still pretty primitive, but if it fulfills its promise, it could rock. Appleworks is nicely done but underpowered, and only comes bundled with the iMac and iBook. We're stuck with monopoly and mediocrity for now.
Customer Review: Macs and Business, Office v. X a must-have
Summary: 5 Stars
Office v. X is a solid upgrade of the venerable suite from Microsoft. It looks great in Mac OS X, and more importantly WORKS great. I spend a great deal of time using Entourage, Word, and Excel -- the more I do, the more I find to like.I get 400+ emails per day, and the extensive rules support, linking of messages to contacts, and linking between all aspects of Entourage to be a huge help in staying organized.
I was a *long* time user of Eudora, and missed it at first, but appreciate the benefits Entourage brings.
The other parts of Office are hugely powerful too, but by now, you probably know you need it anyway!
Customer Review: ...
Summary: 3 Stars
I understand why you would want to buy this product. If you constantly use powerpoint, then you should use this. But if not, than you don't need to buy it. If you save your excel or word documents under save as, than you can save it as a word format to use with word. It is completely compatable with word, and if you do the work on word and go back to your mac, you can still open it on Apple works.
This is a great program, but if you don't use powerpoint, than don't buy it.
Customer Review: Great Product for the Average or New User
Summary: 3 Stars
If you're thinking about getting a Mac and you're concerned about needing Microsoft Office for compatibility with others, then this might be OK for you. Yes, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint have worked great on the Mac since before Windows was a useable product. That's the good news. The less-good news (that you might not really care about) is that some of the most advanced features of Office on the PC are not available in v.X or any other Mac version. These are mostly esoteric things like debugging capability in Visual Basic. Microsoft claims that there are features in v.X that are not in the latest version of Office for PC [perhaps true at the time that v.X was released], and this may be literally true but irrelevant. There are features in the XP version of Office that are not and may never be in a Mac version. For anybody who just wants to be able to do moderate writing or presentations, this product will work just fine. But, it will not be compatible with the PC versions in *every* feature. [Now that I think about it, the problems are usually worse when going from PC to Mac rather than Mac to PC.]
Let me put it this way: I am a good user of both Windows and Mac, but I am a Mac fan by nature. Until recently I only owned Macs, but used PCs at work. Recently I was laid off and needed a computer for consulting work. As much as it hurt, I bought a PC laptop to get the advanced features of Office XP. I still love the Mac and OS X, and I even like v.X. But in my business I couldn't make a living off of v.X. Microsoft controls the Office experience, and they make it work better in Windows.
If you don' know or care anything about esoteric advanced features, please go get a Mac, Jaguar, and v.X!