I am purchasing my first IMac for my home. I use Office 2003 on my pc where I work. I do alot of spreadsheets in Excel and Letters in Word. Occasionally I will e-mail word and excel documents to my home pc so I can work on them there. My question is should I purchase the 2008 Office for the Mac or when I utilize Boot Camp, just install my 2003 Office PC version on the partitioned Windows side. Thanks for your input!
Mac Specs: MacBook 2.4 GHz, 4 Gb, 320 GB 7200 RPM WD Scorpio, OS X 10.6.2, Win 7
Unless you have a compelling reason to run other Win programs, I suggest not installing Windows at all. What you might consider rather than purchasing Office 2008, is try the new version of Open Office for the Mac which is currently at version 3.0. OO now directly supports the Aqua desktop which means there is no longer a requirement to install X11. OO is free and is compatible with Office documents.
Mac Specs: Dual Core 2.3GHz G5 OS X.5.8 8GB DDR2 RAM
Ask your company to come good with a copy of Office 2008 for your home use as you are doing the work for them. If you go the way of Office 2008 change the preferences to save files etc as .doc and .xls rather than the standard .docx and so on.
Many PC users do not know of the Open XML Converter Upgrade Pack. IMHO Open Office has limited uses.
If all you are doing is using Office apps at home, you don't need Boot Camp. You can create a virtual windows machine via Parallels or Fusion - and that will allow you to have your Office apps open at the same time as you are running Mac programs, in their own windows on the desktop. While you pay a bit for Fusion or Parallels, Boot Camp really makes sense if you need to run Windows natively.
Some companies won't provide Mac office versions, only the Windows versions - if that's the case, consider the VM approach.
I use StarOffice (a variant of Open Office), and I use Open Office under Ubuntu Linux. Great programs, easy to use -- BUT -- limited in their ability to be seamless with complex corporate-generated documents, in my experience. Fine for single-user-generated SOHO-type docs, but tougher to integrate and use when telecommuting with a large organization committed to the Windows platform. Just my two cents - certainly worth trying, though.
Mac Specs: MBP, 2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD, 1991 Powerbook 100, Gen 2 Nano, Gen 1 Touch
I got fed up of using Office 2008 as the compatibility was never truly 100%. OpenOffice.org is ok, but not fantastic. I used Office 2003 in Parallels for a while but got bored of having to boot a VM every time I needed to use Word... So, I now use CrossOver and run Office 2003 within OS X. Works like a charm and is as if I was running it in Windows. Plus it sits in your Dock just like an OS X app...
__________________ Oh...and only pretty girls use Macs...
Last edited by quicksilver; 12-06-2008 at 04:15 PM.
Reason: Adding thumbnail
