Contemplating Switch: Office Woes

I am considering on switching to Mac after the Mac OS X Leopard comes out. I am fed up with popup balloons and the needy personality of Windows. Let's not forget the lag and freezups. One of my concerns, however, is what will I do in the lines of word processing, spreadsheets, power point, and data bases. I've have read reviews on iWorks and Apple Works and they both seem to get lukewarm reviews at best.

I am aware that Microsoft Office is available for Mac, but one of my concerns is how the program will function on the new Intel Duo Core Processors as they were originally designed for the G4 & G5 (from my understanding). I have heard where a lot of programs perform worse on Mac, even though the Roselita (is that what it's called) is susposed to allieviate this problem. Additionally, I am under the impression that Microsoft Access is not available in the Mac's Microsoft Office Package.

Is there anyone to can clear up some of these matters for me? Are there any alternatives that I should consider. I am proficient in most Office programs, so I am looking for something that is feature rich. I definately want to avoid the Boot Camp situation of having two OS on one computer. If I abondon Windows for Mac, I would prefer to abondon Windows for good.

Thanks for any help and/or advice.

G'day DotMatrixGamer & welcome to Mac-Forums.

There are a few word processor options, the one I'll recommend is :

NeoOffice

It is free and would meet your needs.

hey there,

another you could try is - open office

found here

http://www.openoffice.org/
i think either neo office - as pulse-8 said or open office have a database feature.

ms office on mac runs ok on my imac. (intel). it runs as fast or faster as my ibook g4,

more intensive aps like photoshop and dreamweaver will be slower under rosseta.

If you wait for Leopard, you will be happy to know that you should also be able to get MS Office 2008 shortly there-after, which is universal (PowerPC & Intel), AFAIK.

I personally use NeoOffice, which isn't too bad. It is quite the memory hog, however, so I'd reccomend at least 1GB of RAM.

Office 2004 runs under Rosetta on Intel Macs. This allows it to be fully compatible with Intel OSX. Speed wise, I haven't noticed any difference in performance between O2k4 on my MacBookPro and O2k3 on my WinXP Stinkpad.

However, as mentioned, Office 2008 is coming. It will be a Universal Binary and will run at its best speed both PowerPC or Intel based Macs. O2k8 is projected to arrive at the end of this year. Until then, I recommend OpenOffice.

BTW, I've been using Office 2007 on WinXP. We can trash Vista all we want, but Office 2007 is groundbreaking. IMO, its interface is superior to anything else. I can't wait to see what happens with O2k8.

I have the student edition of microsoft office 2004
and it works great have had no problems, it hasnt crashed, it opens up attachments made on a windows pc.

However, as you said there isnt a microsoft access package i am aware of.

Hope this is of some help to you

Office for Mac runs fine on my CD MBP. It's no screamer, but it's perfectly usable. I think Office for Mac is superior in most respects to the pre-2007 versions of Office for Windows. I haven't played with 2007 for Windows yet, but the screenshots I've seen of 2008 for Mac are very impressive.

For word-processing, I've switched over to Pages for the majority of my day-to-day work. It handles, with elegance, the majority of my needs without the bloat of Word. I still use Excel, but will probably switch away from that when iWork '07 comes out.

I also use Entourage at the office for connectivity to Exchange. I have no need for presentation software, so I've barely used either Powerpoint nor Keynote.

For database work, I have MySQL on both my G4 mini and my CD MBP. It's lacking the front-end that Access has, but then (unlike Access), MySQL is a real database.

NeoOffice is great too, but I don't find it to be any faster than Word or Excel, and like MS Office is fairly bloated. I just don't (generally) need that much horsepower from my word processor.

DotMatrixGamer said:

I am considering on switching to Mac after the Mac OS X Leopard comes out. I am fed up with popup balloons and the needy personality of Windows. Let's not forget the lag and freezups. One of my concerns, however, is what will I do in the lines of word processing, spreadsheets, power point, and data bases. I've have read reviews on iWorks and Apple Works and they both seem to get lukewarm reviews at best.

I am aware that Microsoft Office is available for Mac, but one of my concerns is how the program will function on the new Intel Duo Core Processors as they were originally designed for the G4 & G5 (from my understanding). I have heard where a lot of programs perform worse on Mac, even though the Roselita (is that what it's called) is susposed to allieviate this problem. Additionally, I am under the impression that Microsoft Access is not available in the Mac's Microsoft Office Package.

Click to expand...

Now that I've had the opportunity to experience Apple First Hand and Hands On, there are a lot of misconceptions. I don't mean to change the heart of your post, however I'm finding there are just as many challenges using an Apple as with using a PC, there are just time sinks in different areas.

I still get pop ups when surfing with Safari or FireFox on the Mac, FireFox also locks up from time to time and I have to do a force quit. I'm still baffled as to why Safari completely lacks a Sorting System for links, what an over-site, I understand it works in earlier version though.

After trying out vista yesterday at a friends house Microsoft has made some interesting improvements and some much needed simplification functionality. Mac Office is a great software package, I'm looking forward to Office 2008. I beta tested Office 2007 and liked it a great deal. I think you will like the switch, its been a lot of fun using a Mac.

About the pop-ups, I haven't had any in a very very very long time and I use Safari as well. This add-on does the work: PithHelmet stops pop ups dead. So does Saft and a lot more.

For more Safari add-ons, check out Pimp My Safari.

I use Office 2004:Mac every day on my C2D MBP. Primarily I run Word and Excel but I also use Powerpoint from time to time. No Entourage, I prefer the built-in Mail/iCal/Address Book apps that came with OS X.

The Office:Mac apps can be a little slow to start because Rosetta is involved. But once you're up and running, the programs are 95% similar to the Windows version and run fast enough that I've never noticed an issue.

I chose Office:Mac over NeoOffice because I need password protection compatibility with Office:Win files, and my company does a lot of revision marking work in Word which also doesn't translate over to the NeoOffice word processor.

It will be interesting to see how iWork'07 and Office:Mac'08 compare. iWork is so inexpensive that I can see getting and using it for most of my work and then only calling upon Office when I need a particular feature not available on iWork (like the aforementioned password compatibility, etc.).

Question about Keynote: is there a way to make an executable presentation that runs on a Windows machine? I do presentations at govt agencies on a regular basis and they won't let me plug a computer into the network so instead I just bring my Powerpoint file on a jump drive.

I don't believe that the original post had to do with web pop-ups, but those aggonizingly annoying balloon messages you get whenever your wireless network changes, Microsoft thinks you need to clean up your desktop, or any other mind-numbingly numorous irritating opportunities. It's like whomever at Microsoft created "clippy" was given free rain on XP.

I don't find the lack of a sort function in Safari to be a burden, and there's probably a plug-in that gives you that functionality if you need it. Yes I've had Safari and Firefox lock up, but far less frequently than any Windows application. Oddly enough, I have *never* had to force-quit any of the Microsoft Office applications, yet Outlook used to freeze up on me on an almost-daily basis. Word and Excel for PC were only slightly more reliable.

Having used Vista, I have to say that I am woefully underimpressed. My friends all think it's great, but then if I had been spoon-fed Windows for the last 20 years with no glimpse into what else was out there, I'd think Vista was a huge improvement too. Frankly, it is. But for those of us who have used anything else (not just MacOS but Linux as well), Vista just feels outdated.

ToddG said:

Question about Keynote: is there a way to make an executable presentation that runs on a Windows machine? I do presentations at govt agencies on a regular basis and they won't let me plug a computer into the network so instead I just bring my Powerpoint file on a jump drive.

Click to expand...

Not an executable, no. Keynote can create a QuickTime movie however, but that doesn't give you the flexibility of really controlling the length of time between transitions.

I don't mean to hi-jack this post, but since other questions have been asked here is mine. I use Entourage only because it has the ability to create a meeting and then invite others to accept or decline via email. My question is, is there any other non Microsoft email program that has this ability? And of course the question I have asked time and again, does any really know if there will be a Mac version of OneNote, or do I just continue to run it under Virtual PC on my PowerBook G4? Thanks!

MacHeadCase said:

About the pop-ups, I haven't had any in a very very very long time and I use Safari as well. This add-on does the work: PithHelmet stops pop ups dead. So does Saft and a lot more.

For more Safari add-ons, check out Pimp My Safari.

Click to expand...

I think he was talking about how Windows pops up a message every time it finds a new wireless connection, or it thinks your usb device can perform faster, or your network cable is unplugged, or it smells something funny, or it sees the cat walking behind you, or it thinks it might have a cold, etc, etc.

Speaking about Access, MS doesn't make it for Mac because FileMaker is the dominator of that market on Mac.

BuzWeaver said:

*Snip*
I still get pop ups when surfing with Safari or FireFox on the Mac, FireFox also locks up from time to time and I have to do a force quit. I'm still baffled as to why Safari completely lacks a Sorting System for links, what an over-site, I understand it works in earlier version though.

*Snip*

Click to expand...

dohidied said:

I think he was talking about how Windows pops up a message every time it finds a new wireless connection, or it thinks your usb device can perform faster, or your network cable is unplugged, or it smells something funny, or it sees the cat walking behind you, or it thinks it might have a cold, etc, etc.

Click to expand...

I was answering the Safari pop-ups problem BuzWeaver posted about. :girl:

I appreciate that (and I will look into it), however pop-ups are the least of my concerns at the moment. :bone:

yogi said:

Speaking about Access, MS doesn't make it for Mac because FileMaker is the dominator of that market on Mac.

Click to expand...

I see.

ToddG said:

Question about Keynote: is there a way to make an executable presentation that runs on a Windows machine? I do presentations at govt agencies on a regular basis and they won't let me plug a computer into the network so instead I just bring my Powerpoint file on a jump drive.

Click to expand...

Go to File...Export.

you can export the file as a powerpoint to your jump drive. some of the graphics don't carry over obviously...but it works fine for me when I need to do something like that

Aubie16 said:

Go to File...Export.

you can export the file as a powerpoint to your jump drive. some of the graphics don't carry over obviously...but it works fine for me when I need to do something like that

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, Aubie16! If I have to run Powerpoint anyway, then it's still not really a viable alternative. Oh, well. Maybe the Keynote in iWork'07 will address this compatibility hole.