Microsoft Office X for Mac Upgrade

The modern user interface within Office v. X has been completely redesigned to include a bold new Aqua visual appearance--a perfect representation of what an application running on the new Mac OS X should look and feel like. Communication is a snap. E-mail is made even easier in Entourage X by allowing connections to Microsoft Exchange servers, Hotmail, and Mac.com so users can more efficiently manage e-mail online and off. With the integrated and improved Entourage calendar, you can easily organize your schedule, and set reminders for important events and projects.

Office v. X is compatible with Office 2001 for Mac, Office 98 Macintosh Edition, Office for Microsoft Windows, AppleWorks 6, and FileMaker Pro 5.5, so you can share work and files with anyone, whether they use a Mac or PC. Keep track of contacts with the comprehensive Address Book, which stores all of your contact information and allows you to locate an address on a map or find driving directions from Expedia.com. Improved task reporting, calendar functions, and international time zone adjustments make time management even easier. Easily access customizable templates for resumes, catalogs, newsletters, calendars, and more from the Project Gallery. The Clip Art Gallery, including hundreds of images, provides tools to make working with graphics quick and easy.

However on working with it more you get used to it, and it has some nice features that the Windows version doesn't.

3+
Entourage - I have really come to like the app - I use it as a replacement for Palm Desktop (Memos), Address Book (it is a little 'richer'), and Mail (it does hotmail as well as POP & IMAP), and everything integrates well.
Ability to mark a doc for followup - Office will give you a reminder, even when it's not running.
It's Office, right? It does almost everything.

3-
While docs are compatible with Windows versions, I have had problems with complex spreadsheets, so I do not think it is 100% perfect.
It is a little sluggish (800mhz G4 iMac, Panther, 512mb).
Entourage's calendar management isn't as good as iCal - can't publish/subscribe, or even import/export data. More generally, Entourage isn't very 'open' - it shares data well with other parts of the app, but not other apps.

Overall, it does what you expect and let's face it, it's the de facto standard for a reason. Expensive thought!


HOW TO FIX UNEXPECTED CRASH BUG   November 23, 2003
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Some very nice person posted this. So I feel it's my duty to spread the word.
You may get a "Word has unexpectedly quit your system has not been damaged" message. You'll see an angry review below about someone who was broken by this problem.

Do the following
1. Open your folder with your user name
2. Open your library folder
3. Open your microsoft folder
4. DELETE the following two files:

Word Font Substitutes
Word Settings (10)

If for some reason you are having trouble finding the files just type them into the folder names into your search engine and you should be able to locate them. Microsoft Word will immediately work again and the files will be recreated automatically.

SPREAD THE WORD (v.X)!


yes, it is bloatware, but it is good bloatware   October 22, 2003
Kaleberg (Port Angeles, WA United States)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful

To start with, let us accept that Office is bloatware. It is big, relatively unwieldy, and is full of features. A quick scan of the menus and cryptic toolbars almost screams "DESIGNED BY A COMMITTEE".

On the other hand, this is not all bad. I use Word ALL of the time and Excel on a regular basis. I keep trying to find an alternate word processor, so I've download Nisus and iWrite and a host of other toys. Most of these are perfectly respectable word processors, but I rarely get far before I need to use something I'm used to in Word. Sometimes it is image embedding, sometimes it is an obscure cross referencing facility, and sometimes I need to build a table that spans pages and, oh, and, oh yeah, and .... Word has the BEST tables facility. I used to work with a guy called Matrix Breath, so I really got to know tables.

Suddenly, I'm exporting my document in RTF and a promising application has been demoted to "toy". This is actually the upside of bloatware. It's sort of like those toolkits one always drools over in hardware stores with nine hundred ratchet bolt heads, a glistening array of extender bars, and six power grip handles, one for each arm of Siva. Normal humans never need these kits. They may buy them, use one small set of components, then lose a piece and then go out and buy a screwdriver.

My plumber owns four of these, all calibrated. My auto mechanic owns six, because he needs English, metric and Alfa Romeo.

The downside of bloatware is the learning curve. You really have to learn in order to use even 10% of all the features. Did you know there is an equation editor? Did you know that there is a garbage grade drawing program? Did you know that there is an almost lame, but actually useful image processing component? Word v.X can probably edit movies and burn DVDs, but if you can't get to Dungeon Level XVI, stick with iMovie and iDVD.

Yes, you do have to spend your first half hour with Word disabling the "Do What You Think I Mean" features. I learned how to format a business letter back in grade school and I'll insert my own superscripting, thank you very much.

Still, it is no exageration to say that Word is possibly the best piece of bloatware ever written. (EMACS is a close number two).

As for Excel, it too is a fine piece of bloatware. VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet was almost lapidary. It had just enough stuff in it to sell Apple IIs. Lotus 123 started the accretion process and at some point, the planetary disk coalesced into Excel which lets you solve partial differential equations using the Karmarkar algorithm and format the result in cuneiform. It takes two extra keystrokes for hieroglyphics.

I don't even use those little calculator programs anymore. I just keep Excel running - no sweat under OS X - and then, when I decide I didn't mean 2+2, but I really wanted a regression analysis, I already have my data sitting right where it can do me some good.

As for Powerpoint. I haven't used it in years. Yes, so I'm a mutant. Mutants are IN nowadays. Ask Hugh Jackman or Anna Paquin. My niece wanted to make a birthday card and she accidentally started up Powerpoint. Well, it has mutated. You can do collage animation, it supports sound, video, programmatic sequencing and even some lame user interaction. It's no threat to Macromedia, but these features are such time sinks that we might be spared a few bullet slides.

As with everything else in the Office suite, its accumulators crackle with barely restrained power. (Any Doc Smith or IBM 1130 fans out there?)

So, if you are a normal human. Try getting a normal human office suite. Appleworks is just fine. If you need more, more, more, then you should break down and go for Office. It definitely has more, more, more, just like Bill Gates.

As a bonus, the Macintosh version and Windows versions eat the same file formats, so you can freak out Windows users.