Have you purchased Office:Mac (MS Office 2004) for your Mac?

Have you guys? would you again?

I am contemplating it, and after doing a search of the forums, my decision is still on the fence.

Let me know!

I bought it, though at a significantly discounted price. I probably would buy it again because despite my feelings towards Microsoft, it really is some good software. It is really easy to use, especially if you know how to use the Windows version. I have never used any of the Apple counterparts but I haven't heard anything bad about them so there are another options if you don't want to get Office.

I was able to download it for free through my University website. I enjoy it a lot, but it iis bothersome how sluggishly it runs compared to native software. None the less it is invaluable becuase I grew up with Windows and Office so it is just a natrual tool for me to use. If you are already acquainted with Office id say stick with it. How much does it run for anyway?

Nope. I use AbiWord for docs and Google Spreadsheets for any excel things. I haven't done anything in PPT since my junior year of high schoo

I have MS office on my iMac. It runs great for me and have never had any problems with it. It is just like the MS version but on a superior OS.

It depends how much you depend on sharing documents with others...
If I only had to pass out the occasional essay, I'd just use Pages and save everything as PDF's and leave it at that.

But at uni we fairly often have to collaborate on things, so I need word to guarantee things like formatting and versioning just work.

I also never use Excel and prefer Keynote to Powerpoint, so it really is a question of how often you really think you'll be needing the specific advantages of Office.

Check out the 30 day demo if you haven't already!

http://www.mactopia.com

I do own it, and I do use it, and I would buy it again. That is not to say that it should be your choice in software. If I were you I would think, what do I need this for? Will I need Excel? Etc. If you don't need excel and all you are going to be doing is typing documents and presentations, then I would stick with iWork. Keynote is a very good software program and Pages is also really really nice program to work with. To be honest the only thing I use Office for is Excel, and if you don't need it I would go with iWork. Like Aptmunich said, get the demo and choose for yourself, theres also a demo of ms office on your computer you can also try. (its in your applications folder as Microsoft Office Test Drive)

When I decided to buy a Mac, I decided that there were only two apps I was willing to spend significant coin on - Photoshop was one and Microsoft Office was the other. Like it or not, Microsoft Office is the golden standard for office apps. If you need to share files with others, it is really the only choice.

If you are just looking for a good set of apps for your self, you may find NeoOffice to be the better choice - it is quite MS Office compatible and support excellent clones for Word, Powerpoint and Excel.

As was also pointed out above, Abiword is an excellent word processor and gnumeric is an excellent spreadsheet.

So, lots of options, but Microsoft Office is your best bet. Get the Student/Teacher version, only about $130.00.

I bought it, but working at at university I was able to buy the educational version for $150 and I got the $50 rebate on top of that. $100 for MS Office is a very fair price. If M$ really wants to cut down on piracy, $150 would be the normal price for the basic office (word, excel, powerpoint, outlook/entourage).

If I had to purchase the full $300-$400 (whatever it is) version, I would have gone with NeoOffice or OpenOffice. For normal spreasheets and docs the alternatives are fine. But things are have a heavy use of macros and scripts...I found too many problems trying to use them in OpenOffice.

MS Office is the defacto standard, but I wouldn't call it the "golden" standard.

jc1350 said:

MS Office is the defacto standard....

Click to expand...

That's pretty much it. Kinda have to have it because its what the whole world uses. When you think about it, the layout of the keyboard is pretty ridiculous, too, but that's what everybody uses and there's not much sense bucking.

I bought it. It's okay. It's just word processing, nothing special. I really hope they release their new Office 2007 for Mac too, the beta for Windows is wonderful (never thought I'd say that about Office!). The new organizational layout and GUI are both fantastic. If not, I hope it runs in Parallels well

i bought it and i use it all the time because of the way it works seamlessly with pc's...i didnt like saving in different formats when i had neooffice
-chris

I use it all the time. I actually like PPT for Mac better than Office 2003. The themes are better and (with a small compatibility check) works seemlessly with my PC version.