[indigoimac]

When will it be coming out. and will v.x run in Panther?

[Chris Grande]

The current version runs in Panther just fine. 2004 is slated to come out some time in the Spring...no exact dates yet.

[indigoimac]

and one more thing is it pretty much "safe" to say that most apps for x.2 will run in panther?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by indigoimac:
and one more thing is it pretty much "safe" to say that most apps for x.2 will run in panther?

Depends on the app. Panther changed a lot of things. All my apps needed to be updated...

It depends on what parts of the system the apps are using. I think most should be all right, but there were an awful lot of them that broke. There should be updates for most of these by now, though (one notable exception being my own BootCD, which is still in testing).

[Oneota]

Originally posted by Chris Grande:
The current version runs in Panther just fine. 2004 is slated to come out some time in the Spring...no exact dates yet.

The current version runs just fine unless you're using a networked home directory, which according to Microsoft is NOT supported.

It kinda works, but you run into all sorts of troubles with objects, macros...it's not terribly pretty.

[godzookie2k]

I really hope its not going to be panther only.

[Chulo]

I was told that if you purchase MS Office you'll get a free upgrade to Office 2004. Is this true and will it apply to upgrade of Office X to Office 11? Will it apply to student edition? Any clues would be appreciated.

[tRr]

Originally posted by Chulo:
I was told that if you purchase MS Office you'll get a free upgrade to Office 2004. Is this true and will it apply to upgrade of Office X to Office 11? Will it apply to student edition? Any clues would be appreciated.

Here is the info on it:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default...d=office2004tg

[Busemann]

Anyone knows if it has support for long filenames & live window resizing?

[Blanchard]

Originally posted by Chris Grande:
The current version runs in Panther just fine. 2004 is slated to come out some time in the Spring...no exact dates yet.

I don't quite agree. Just this week, see this thread and this other one

and I wouldn't rely on a bug-free Office 2004 (no app is bug-free but Office is bugged)

[philcozz]

Does anybody know if the 2004 version of Entourage will have message threading ability, ala Thunderbird or GyazMail?

[macmike42]

Originally posted by philcozz:
Does anybody know if the 2004 version of Entourage will have message threading ability, ala Thunderbird or GyazMail?

I haven't used Entourage in ages, but I remember it having a threaded view at that time. The sorting of threaded view left a lot to be desired (only sorts alphabetically by subject IIRC), but it was present.

[philcozz]

Originally posted by macmike42:
I haven't used Entourage in ages, but I remember it having a threaded view at that time. The sorting of threaded view left a lot to be desired (only sorts alphabetically by subject IIRC), but it was present.

Right... I'm wondering if the "thread by date" technology has found its way to M$.

[tooki]

Originally posted by indigoimac:
and one more thing is it pretty much "safe" to say that most apps for x.2 will run in panther?

Almost all applications that follow the rules (i.e. don't dig into the system in places they're not supposed to) work just fine in Panther. On the grand scheme of things, very little has changed, from an application's point of view.

tooki

[nobitacu]

I use Office X everyday for college and other uses, so I will be getting the update when 2004 comes out. I just hope that it'll be stable.

Ming

[tikki]

I am not really that excited. Call me crazy, but there aren't that many features that the average user is going to find that useful. Plus, from what I gathered at MWSF04, Entourage's Exchange Support is still not going to be MAPI. Bastards.

[-Q-]

I'm with Tikki. Nothing they announced really excited me. However, if it supports long filenames, I'll upgrade.

[Mr Scruff]

It'd be nice if they fixed the font rendering (or better yet just use the existing api's) since it sucks with Office V.X

If you zoom a page to 125% for example, the kerning gets completely mangled, and it's impossible to see whether there's a space or between 2 words.

And it ignores my anti-aliasing settings.

[MartiNZ]

Yeah, I've noticed that as well. For the first time I've actually found I like working with the invisible characters on so that I can see how many spaces and all that. I was recently working on a report I had chosen to do in Helvetica - not smart if you want to view zoomed in at all as the size of spaces has quite a large range!

Also, there are certainly issues with the smoothing - it seems that it is dependent on the font. Helvetica pixelates at 10pt when viewed at 100%, as does Monaco, but Monaco CE for some reason is still smooth at 10. Arial seems to do reasonably well, and somehow the smoothing works differently in Word and Excel. I think they need to sort out that zoom thing so that 100% is not so tiny - 12pt on my iBook looks like 10pt on a PC.

And one other thing I've been noticing: Excel v.X is dog slow with calculating cells when you have lots of data. I've been working recently at a desk with a Pentium 2 350MHz and I was finding it really slow with such calculations, so I transfered the data to my iBook G3 800MHz... and it was just as slow if not slower . I do like the fact that we don't get the out-of-control fast scrolling in Excel v.X but there are some things I would rather have faster!

[magicbbird]

I was just typing up a big report and all of a sudden Word quits. Fortunately it saves the marjority of the work automatically. But I am getting sick of all this random quitting on me. I have done uninstalling and reinstalling, get all the latest and greatest patches. It still happen from time to time.

I don't think it is a hardware issue, either. I just got my brand new 12"Al, 768M ram, and it still does it along with my older DP1.25 G4.

I wonder what would you guys use as an alternative (or if any). I used to use OpenOffice on Windows and it is not bad at all. I wonder if there are any similar products (free?) out there that do the job.

[cpac]

Originally posted by magicbbird:
I used to use OpenOffice on Windows and it is not bad at all. I wonder if there are any similar products (free?) out there that do the job.

You could try... (dramatic pause)... OpenOffice.

It runs in X11 and they are in the process of porting it to make it OS X native. There a variety of flavors out there too - do a search for open office to read some of the threads on it...

[wataru]

Originally posted by magicbbird:
I wonder what would you guys use as an alternative (or if any). I used to use OpenOffice on Windows and it is not bad at all. I wonder if there are any similar products (free?) out there that do the job.

If you'd like to use OpenOffice.org on OS X then check out NeoOffice/J. It's basically OO.o 1.0.3 with a Java wrapper around it so that it acts like a regular OS X application (as compared to the vanilla OO.o which requires X11). Be sure to check it out. The developer has been working at a terrific pace, so even if it doesn't fit your needs right now it might very soon.

[magicbbird]

Thanks for your advice. I downloaded NeoOffice/J and installed it. I would think I need some time getting used to the UI (so "classic" or Win 3.1 feel). I try open one of my documents and sadly, somehow it does some funny thing to them and display not right (just a simple document with numbering list).

I will try again. I realize there is OOo 1.0.3. I use Panther now so I think I don't need other stuff installed (as it has X11 built-in), right? But not using the built-in font and printing functions suck, though.

Thanks for all your help.

[wataru]

Originally posted by magicbbird:
I will try again. I realize there is OOo 1.0.3. I use Panther now so I think I don't need other stuff installed (as it has X11 built-in), right? But not using the built-in font and printing functions suck, though.

Thanks for all your help.

NeoOffice/J is OO.o 1.0.3, so you will not do any better by using the X11 version.

I see that they have put out an installer for OO.o 1.1.1 for Mac (via X11). I haven't used it, but you might give this a shot as well. Just be forewarned, it is not release quality and may not behave nicely for you.

[Vader’s Pinch of Death]

So what are the new icons for this sucker?

[ginoledesma]

I'm wishing OpenOffice 1.1 were available for the Mac already. The 1.0.x releases were very much slower than the 1.1 release (on the PC side).

Anyone knows if it has support for long filenames & live window resizing?

Hasn't long file name support been around since Mac Office 98? As for live window resizing, nope, not yet. I didn't know Office v.X had Carbon, but then again, it would've been surprising to see them be true rewrites as Cocoa apps.

[Moose]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Hasn't long file name support been around since Mac Office 98?

HFS+ (8.1+) introduced filenames up to 255 characters in length, up from 31 supported in HFS. Mac OS X brought system-wide support for those "long filenames." Microsoft Office still supports only 31 characters.

As for live window resizing, nope, not yet. I didn't know Office v.X had Carbon, but then again, it would've been surprising to see them be true rewrites as Cocoa apps.

Live window resizing is possible in Carbon. You just have to use the right APIs. What we're all seeing is that while you can port a Classic app to Carbon relatively quickly, it takes somewhat longer to port it so it looks like a Mac OS X application.

[selowitch]

How about Unicode support? I've heard varying reports. It would be so nice if MS could fulfill the promise of OS X's underlying Unicode-friendly architecture.