10-30-2004, 04:54 PM

Hello all,

I am a experienced PC user and a Mac user for couple of weeks.
I have a G3 400, 512MB that I have bought for trying out Macs.

I have never ever used Office:mac. Which one should I get: v X or 2004.
I have heard 2004 is slower or is that v. X.
How about features, and mostly compatibility with PC format ??
Price doesnt matter cause office is something I use a lot.

Thanks

10-30-2004, 06:27 PM

I would recommend that latest version, 2004. No reason to get the old version, the new one works fine and of course will be more compatible.

10-30-2004, 07:03 PM

ok so no speed difference ??

10-30-2004, 07:10 PM

I have a love-hate relationship with Office.

I have 2004, and it's great. As far as Office goes, it's better than the PC version. I prefer Entourage to Mail and I prefer Word to TextEdit. However, it does some bloody stupid things. Sometimes it struggles to open documents from a PC, however this problem has stopped since getting Service Pack 1, so no problems any more. Plus, it fixed a bug where Excel would crash whenever you wanted to print.

It's the normal buggy Microsoft code, but for the price and the connivence of being able to use the same programs everybody else, it's worth it.

10-30-2004, 07:48 PM

I'd have to agree with iSheep. Word is the only app that has ever crashed on my PowerBook, and it crashed two times today alone.

The code is buggy, it doesn't work well with OS X (expose screws Word up and most of the normal shortcuts don't work) and it's an overall waste of money.

The only thing that's cool is the new notebook view, which I use a lot as a student, but it's buggy as hell.

So I'll tell you a story. One day I was using the new notebook view. To increase the note level, you push tab. So what do you think the shortcut would be to decrease the note level? Cmd+tab maybe? Nope? Cmd+backspace? Nope. Backspace? Nope. Shift+backspace? Nope. It's shift+ctrl+left arrow. What the heck? So I try to change the shortcut key. I look up 'changing the shortcut keys' up in Office help. Finally I find a document that says 'go to the tools menu and click shortcuts'. Well, I go to the tools menu, and there's no frickin' shorcut button! What the heck, Microsoft!

I'm currently waiting for Apple to release a decent word processor, as AppleWorks 6 is like 5 years old and isn't that great, although it's probably more stable than Word.

Seriously, it's a waste of $300. A terrible suite. Don't waste your money.

10-30-2004, 09:12 PM

I like Word. It's not as speedy as the others, but its hella better than Appleworks, TextEdit, SimpleText, and OpenOffice.org, just to name a few. And its stable, it only crashed on me once, but it was because my Epson printer was crap, so the printer utility decided to crash when I printed a document, it crashed Word, Adium, and then it brought me to the login screen... thank the lord for HP.

I don't use Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage as much, so...

10-30-2004, 10:00 PM

Another vote for 2004. It is the ONLY Microoft product that i will allow to be installed on any of my three machines.

10-31-2004, 04:21 AM

I'd also go with the latest version, get the education edition if you qualify and it isn't that expensive.

For work/school/business you need office compatibility nowadays, might as well stay one step ahead of PC users (latest PC version: Office 2003, funny eh?)

10-31-2004, 05:28 AM

I only got it because I'm a student, I wouldn't waste any extra money on it.

It is an amazing advertisement of Microsoft products for Mac people who might be thinking of switching to Windows. Basically: it's buggy and slow.