Buy Office Mac test drive by Jan 14 to get upgrade?

> any advice on whether it's worth paying for the thing by Jan. 14, to
> get the upgrade to Office 2008?
>

Before making this purchase, you may want to take at least
OpenOffice.org and Apple iWork '08 for a test drive, too.

OpenOffice.org is open source and, as such, is free in both senses of
the word, but, in my humble opinion, its dated UI makes for a _very_
mediocre user experience.

<http://www.openoffice.org/>


Apple's iWork, by comparison, is not quite as feature-laden and, in
some aspects like spreadsheets, not as powerful as OpenOffice.org or
MS Office, but depending on your personal needs, may offer you
everything you need at a very reasonable $80. As for user experience,
I find iWork's look-and-feel highly polished and well-thought-out, and
thoroughly enjoy using it (with a few exceptions regarding some
usability details in Numbers).

A thirty day trial is available from the Apple website if you haven't
received on CD with a recent Mac purchase.

<http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/>


Note that -- with some limitations -- both of these office suites can
read and write Microsoft Office file formats.


Regards,

Jochen.


--
Jochen Wolters
jochenpolytropia.com | http://polytropia.com | jochenwolters (Skype)

Considering you can get the Student and Teacher edition of Office 2004 for under $150 at most online outlets, it's probably worth it if you find yourself using Office much at all. You get all the regular Office programs, as well as what used to be iView Media Pro (now Office Expression Media Library or something like that), which is a really nice media organizer.

If you don't really NEED Office, don't sweat it. More programs will support .docx files in the near future, since it's a pretty open file format. And if you really do need it later, it'll probably be for a job, and your employer will supply you with the software.


--
Nik

nikinik.net | http://inik.net | http://notions.inik.net

On 1/4/08 7:50 AM, "Hank Roberts" <hankspamcop.net> wrote:

> I'm a trailing edge buyer, just bought a Mac Mini Intel, it comes with
> the Office 2004 Test Drive bundle. I just zipped it and forgot it, to
> keep it from popping up trying to open documents, and never registered
> it.

The Test Drive has been a huge problem if not removed before installing the
licensed copy. If you haven't used it, then you can simply drag it to the
trash, but once opened, you must use "Remove Office" sometimes several times
to get rid of it. We've been promised that Office 2008 will be improved
removing the Test Drive.
>
> If you think anyone else is in the same situation --- any advice on
> whether it's worth paying for the thing by Jan. 14, to get the upgrade
> to Office 2008?

I would just get the Home & Student version for 2008. The only benefit of
buying 2004 now would be to take advantage of the free upgrade to the
Special Medial Edition.

Office will be available in three versions: Office 2008 for Mac ($400
retail; $240 for the upgrade), Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition
($150), and Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition ($500; $300 for the
upgrade).

--
Diane

On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:50 AM, Hank Roberts wrote:

> Mossberg thought Mac Office 2008 was okay. I rarely if ever need it.
> Butof course now I'm getting these DOCX file types and ... wonder ....
> worth letting Microsoft twist my arm here?

You may want to drag those .docx files onto Text Edit in Leopard and
see what happens.

Randy B. Singer • Mac OS X Routine Maintenance • http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Jochen Wolters wrote:
>> any advice on whether it's worth paying for the thing by Jan. 14, to
>> get the upgrade to Office 2008?
>>
>
> Before making this purchase, you may want to take at least
> OpenOffice.org and Apple iWork '08 for a test drive, too.
>
> OpenOffice.org is open source and, as such, is free in both senses of
> the word, but, in my humble opinion, its dated UI makes for a _very_
> mediocre user experience.
>
> <http://www.openoffice.org/>

There's also NeoOffice, which is Open Office with an Aqua GUI:
<http://www.neooffice.org>.

--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

> There's also NeoOffice, which is Open Office with an Aqua GUI:
> <http://www.neooffice.org>.

I live in NeoOffice. It looks and operates fine.

Plus its modules can be set to always save as tHeir mIcroSofT
equivalents.

On 01/06/2008 07:50 AM, "Paul Schinder" <schinderpobox.com> wrote:

>>> any advice on whether it's worth paying for the thing by Jan. 14, to
>>> get the upgrade to Office 2008?
>>>
>>
>> Before making this purchase, you may want to take at least
>> OpenOffice.org and Apple iWork '08 for a test drive, too.
>>
>> OpenOffice.org is open source and, as such, is free in both senses of
>> the word, but, in my humble opinion, its dated UI makes for a _very_
>> mediocre user experience.
>>
>> <http://www.openoffice.org/>
>
> There's also NeoOffice, which is Open Office with an Aqua GUI:
> <http://www.neooffice.org>.

*sort of*. It's Open Office wrapped in Java, there are some speed issues,
although that gets better every release, and the support for OS services and
features is really not that good. It's also a "native" gui in the sense that
it doesn't require X11, not in the sense that it's a decent UI.

--
John C. Welch

At 10:34 AM -0800 1/6/08, John C. Welch wrote:
>> There's also NeoOffice, which is Open Office with an Aqua GUI:
>> <http://www.neooffice.org>.
>
>*sort of*. It's Open Office wrapped in Java, there are some speed issues,
>although that gets better every release, and the support for OS services and
>features is really not that good. It's also a "native" gui in the sense that
>it doesn't require X11, not in the sense that it's a decent UI.

        I do not use any word processor very "hard", and it is more than
adequate for what I use it for. More details on these type of issue can be
seen here:
<http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/NeoOffice_and_Aqua>

So...is NeoOffice written in Java?

No.

NeoOffice is a Mac OS X native version of OpenOffice.org that uses small
amounts of Java code for graphics drawing and configuration.

OpenOffice.org is written primarily in platform-agnostic C++. However,
NeoOffice takes advantage of Mac OS X's advanced Java integration to tap
into the Mac OS X look-and-feel. In other words, the little bits of Java in
NeoOffice primarily have to do with operations that affect how the
application appears to the user. The "guts" of the office suite are written
in C++. (The code that makes up NeoOffice is 99% OpenOffice.org code shared
among all OpenOffice.org platforms and 1% Mac OS X-specific code in Java,
C++, C, and Objective-C. Ohloh.net shows that the NeoOffice-specific code
is 93% C/C++.)

Thus NeoOffice will only run on Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.3.x
or 10.4.x-not on Mac OS 9, Mac OS X 10.2 or lower, Windows, Linux, Darwin,
or any other form of UNIX.

How is Java used in NeoOffice?

As mentioned above, Java is mainly used to tap into the Mac OS X
look-and-feel. What makes NeoOffice work isn't the Java language itself but
rather the libraries that come with the virtual machine like Java 2D for
drawing and AWT for menus. Those are actually already "native" in the Apple
VM in the sense that Java 2D is really CoreGraphics/Quartz and AWT is
really Carbon.[1]

The amount of Java used has also decreased over time. When NeoOffice was
upgraded to the OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 codebase (NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha), text
rendering switched from Java to the Mac OS X native ATSUI APIs since they
are much more suited for complex text layout than Java is.[2] Other
features were never implemented in Java at all (for instance the Dock menu,
which used Carbon in NeoOffice/J 1.1 and Cocoa in newer versions).

--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

On Jan 6, 2008 4:49 AM, Diane Ross <dianeoforgmail.com> wrote:

on 1/9/08 10:14 am, Nik Friedman TeBockhorst at nikinik.net wrote:

> On Jan 6, 2008 4:49 AM, Diane Ross <dianeoforgmail.com
> <mailto:dianeoforgmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I would just get the Home & Student version for 2008. The only benefit
> of
> buying 2004 now would be to take advantage of the free upgrade to the
> Special Medial Edition.
>
> Since you can get Student & Teacher edition 2004 for $150 and then get a free
> upgrade to the top-of-the-line version of 2008, I sure don't see much profit
> in waiting if you're planning on buying Office at all.

Double-check the fine print before you plan on that--it wouldn't surprise me
one bit if the Student & Teacher edition is not eligible for the 08 free
upgrade.

Mark D. McKean
qpandaquantumpanda.com

Quoting "Mark D. McKean" <qpandaquantumpanda.com>:


> Double-check the fine print before you plan on that--it wouldn't surprise me
> one bit if the Student & Teacher edition is not eligible for the 08 free
> upgrade.

Yeah . . . I was surprised by that too . . . but you can buy either
the Student or the Full version of 2004 now and get your choice of
Student (with 3 licenses), full (with Exchange Support and Automator
Actions) or Media Edition (that includes Media Expression). Media
Expression is also included with the 2008 Student version.

On top of that . . . if you bought your 2004 on Black Friday . . . you
got a 100 dollar rebate . . .and it was on sale from Amazon for 129
including shipping.

So . . . it only cost me 40 bucks to upgrade from Office X to Student
version of 04 and Student version of 08. Not bad.

On 1/10/08 11:47 AM, "Mark D. McKean" <qpandaquantumpanda.com> wrote:

> Double-check the fine print before you plan on that--it wouldn't surprise me
> one bit if the Student & Teacher edition is not eligible for the 08 free
> upgrade.

It is. On the Amazon.com site it has this version is eligible for a free
upgrade. At this moment, the entire Microsoft Mac site is down in
preparation for the new updated site. You can't get to the promotions pages
to view the coupons.

It's easier to understand on Amazon anyway. ; )

--
Diane

On Jan 10, 2008 12:47 PM, Mark D. McKean <qpandaquantumpanda.com> wrote:
> > Since you can get Student & Teacher edition 2004 for $150 and then get a free
> > upgrade to the top-of-the-line version of 2008, I sure don't see much profit
> > in waiting if you're planning on buying Office at all.
>
> Double-check the fine print before you plan on that--it wouldn't surprise me
> one bit if the Student & Teacher edition is not eligible for the 08 free
> upgrade.

Yes, the S&T edition is eligible for the upgrade.

<http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/B/0/FB087329-3E5A-4347-967C-64E7D8B95BD2/MacOffice_SuperSuiteDeal.pdf>

I just got an email from the Microsoft upgrade store telling me that
my my $35 copy of Microsoft Office will ship on the 28th. You've got
to love stacking up your mail-in rebates!

<http://notions.inik.net/post/20063189>

--
Nik | nikinik.net | inik.net | notions.inik.net

On Jan 12, 2008, at 5:13 AM, Neil Laubenthal wrote:

> So . . . it only cost me 40 bucks to upgrade from Office X to Student
> version of 04 and Student version of 08. Not bad.

Of which you end up licensed to use only the '08. Still not bad.

   --John