[Maflynn]

I currently have office v. X and I'm unsure if I want to upgrade to newest release.
I'm mostly an excel user, pretty heavy duty stuff with lots of VBA code. I'm not sure if I will see a speed improvement (or degradation) with the VBA stuff. It runs pretty slow as compared to its PC counterpart.

I've stopped using entourage in place of mail.app but if the improvements are significant I could use that again.

of course there's word and I use that as needed, for memo's the like.

thoughts and opinions?

Mike

[gorickey]

I'd upgrade. I've been more than happy with Office:2004 thus far!

The best thing for you to do is give a trial run with Office:2004 and if you don't like what you are seeing, then don't upgrade...

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Maflynn:
I currently have office v. X and I'm unsure if I want to upgrade to newest release.
I'm mostly an excel user, pretty heavy duty stuff with lots of VBA code. I'm not sure if I will see a speed improvement (or degradation) with the VBA stuff. It runs pretty slow as compared to its PC counterpart.

I've stopped using entourage in place of mail.app but if the improvements are significant I could use that again.

of course there's word and I use that as needed, for memo's the like.

thoughts and opinions?

Mike

There's not a huge difference. If you can get an upgrade for $100, maybe.

[Boochie]

Compatibility with Windows apps is much improved, which is a big consideration in a corporate environment (is for me, anyway!). Each of the apps has a compatibility checker that can flag potential problems in using whatever file you've created in another version of the same application, PC or Mac.

In other areas, Entourage has this new "Project Center" thing that allows you to group together related documents, which is mildly interesting.

Performance-wise I can't say it's any faster or slower, but it is very stable. I'm using Powerpoint and Word 2004 heavily every day, and I think Word has crashed on me just once in two months.

There's a pretty good list of the interesting features here:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma...ms_office.html


One thing you could do is to try out the 30 day testdrive of Office 2004 that you can download for free from Microsoft, and see how it plays with your VBA stuff.

[philcozz]

I, too, think the new version is much improved over old. For me, the whole thing really hinges on Word since I use Mail.app and Keynote instead of Entourage and PowerPoint.

The changes I appreciate most about the new version of Word are the compatibility menu that has been mentioned in a previous message, the change of the comments and track changes features so they behave more like the Windoze versions (a major source of my work gets done collaboratively with those two features), and the stability. I never had too many crashes/problems with v.X, but I don't think the new version has crashed once and I use it heavily.

Hope that helps...

[Sod Off Sadr]

I like it more than v.X for asthetics, power, options, etc.

[monkeybrain]

You might want to read this thread: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=222334

Many people, me included, find word (and others the other apps) to be laggy when typing. It was unbearable for me, I switched to OpenOffice in X11 - it's a rubbish interface but it's a hell of a lot faster.

[Maflynn]

Thanks for all of your replies,
I'll probably snag me a copy.

The issue with word doesn't bother me that much since I use excel more then word.

Mike

[mitchell_pgh]

I would upgrade... I think it's a little more stable for me...

[Eug Wanker]

For basic use, I see no reason to upgrade from v.X. I do like the extra features of 2004 better though, like the notetaking feature in Word. Entourage is supposed to be better with Exchange too, but I don't use Entourage anyway.

[Maflynn]

I purchased Office v. X using the acadamic copy - this was before they came out with the teacher student flavor. Will that be acceptable to the upgrade when it checks or will I need to purchase the full version.

Mike

[Westfoto]

Originally posted by Maflynn:
I purchased Office v. X using the acadamic copy - this was before they came out with the teacher student flavor. Will that be acceptable to the upgrade when it checks or will I need to purchase the full version.

Mike

The real question is what are the differences with the Student version and other versions?

[rmongold]

Originally posted by Westfoto:
The real question is what are the differences with the Student version and other versions?

The price and the number of licenses... You get 3 licenses for about half the price of 1 standard edition license. That's pretty much it.

[Nacente]

Office v.X is enough good. And is compatbile with older versions.

[Boochie]

Compatible with older versions of what? Mac Office products? Perhaps. But vX's compatibility with Windows Office XP or 2003 leaves a lot to be desired, especially in complex documents or presentations with a lot of graphics, multimedia content, animations, etc. I had huge problems with vX in that area. Nary a hitch with 2004. I hate Microsoft as much as the next Mac addict, but 2004 is really a big step forward relative to what they've given us in the past.

Originally posted by Nacente:
Office v.X is enough good. And is compatbile with older versions.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Boochie:
Compatible with older versions of what? Mac Office products? Perhaps. But vX's compatibility with Windows Office XP or 2003 leaves a lot to be desired, especially in complex documents or presentations with a lot of graphics, multimedia content, animations, etc. I had huge problems with vX in that area. Nary a hitch with 2004. I hate Microsoft as much as the next Mac addict, but 2004 is really a big step forward relative to what they've given us in the past.

Bingo... it solved a few minor (but VERY annoying) glitches with my computer and the PC geeks.

I hate Office, but it's a necessary evil for business.

[rmongold]

I'm also getting kinda fond of the fading font pallette. Makes it much less obtrusive than before. And as silly as it sounds, the new Excel view is kinda handy.

That said, I'd say the biggest benefit has to be the compatibility with Windows versions of Office... As strange as it is to say about a MS product, from that perspective, it just works.

[Phil the Fish]

Originally posted by rmongold:
I'm also getting kinda fond of the fading font pallette. Makes it much less obtrusive than before. And as silly as it sounds, the new Excel view is kinda handy.

That said, I'd say the biggest benefit has to be the compatibility with Windows versions of Office... As strange as it is to say about a MS product, from that perspective, it just works.

Personaly the fact that powerpoint 2004 it is noticably slower (even against 2001 in classic mode),
can't run QTVR or SWF correctly in presentation mode (unlike v.X or 2001),
plays reasonable sized QT like a turkey,
poor ability to port over linked files from previous versions of ppt,
and a whole host of other glitches,
means that ppt 2004 is really UNFINISHED , and I have to say that even with the nice transitions and presenter tools, really makes any reasonable multimedia presentation look HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL....
But if you want to be a software tester for MS, go right ahead and buy it NOW!!
I've gone back to 2001, and wishing I'd purchaced v.X rather than holding out for 2004......

NOT A HAPPY BUNNY .... I just hope they update it soon!!!!!!


Phil

[Mrjinglesusa]

I've had no problems with Office 2004. Works great here.

[tuqqer]

I'm a heavy Office user since the days of 98. I write each day in Word, and use Entourage exclusively.

My vote would be to stay at Office X. While there is some nice eye candy and improvements, the glitches noted by others don't make it worth the money (and yes, their "educational" version at $130 is the way to go). Even on my G5 2Ghz, Word does some pauses that make me grind my teeth (for just one example: deleted a bulleted line from a list). If speed is a top priority, I'd stay with Office X, and skip Office 2004 until they come out with some upgrades.

[Chulo]

I think I agree with most of the people here. I upgraded to Office 2004 and it has many more features that come with the suite (Project Center, speech recording, better compatibilty, better interface, etc). Since I work in a Windows world, compatibility is a big issue for me. I agrre that Word is slower than Word in Office X but I'm a sloooowwwwwwww typist so it's a moot issue for me.
I'm very happy with it but if you only do/use the basics than it might not be worth your while.

[tkmd]

Just to chime in with a question: I too have been considering this upgrade- hows the memory and CPU footprint? Word v.X takes a chunk.

By the way, in response to the the concerns about ,slow scrolling in word 2004, there was a long discussion at Ars and a MS developer chimed in and stated that in office 2004 switched from apple quick draw to something else (sorry don't remember) but this effected the scrolling speed.

[typ993]

I'm mostly an excel user, pretty heavy duty stuff with lots of VBA code. I'm not sure if I will see a speed improvement (or degradation) with the VBA stuff. It runs pretty slow as compared to its PC counterpart.

I'm a heavy user of Excel as well and I've got some bad news for you, dude. We've built some Monte Carlo simulation forecasting models that rely heavily on VBA. Before installing Office 2004, I timed a run of this model on Office v.X. After installing 2004, I timed the same run in Excel 2004. 2004 was 30% slower than v.X. I've also found that 2004 is much more susceptible to any kind of file corruption than v.X and will immediately crash as a result.

After Macintouch publicized my report a couple of months ago, Micro$oft contacted me about the problem and I sent them a copy of the model. Haven't heard from them since. Probably since they are working on the zillion other bugs.

<rant>

My GOD! Microsloth had what, 4 fscking YEARS to get a new version out and what do we get? Long file names, lots of upgrades in Entourage (which I don't use at all, I stay far, far away from any email program that keeps mail in a database), and minor feature tweaks for everything else. Oh, and the added bonus of a slower Excel and a PowerPoint that when you type, it seems like you could write out the slide in longhand faster. For all the kudos heaped on the Mac BU at Microsloth, they certainly did a piss poor job here.

</rant>

[Devin Lane]

Originally posted by typ993:
<snip>

<rant>

My GOD! Microsloth had what, 4 fscking YEARS to get a new version out and what do we get? Long file names, lots of upgrades in Entourage (which I don't use at all, I stay far, far away from any email program that keeps mail in a database), and minor feature tweaks for everything else. Oh, and the added bonus of a slower Excel and a PowerPoint that when you type, it seems like you could write out the slide in longhand faster. For all the kudos heaped on the Mac BU at Microsloth, they certainly did a piss poor job here.

</rant>

Thats EXACTLY what I have been thinking with Office 2004. How long did it take them to put in these changes? Granted the Office suite is very complex, but 4 years and it doesn't get any faster? No groundbreaking new features? What were they doing for 4 years?

[itai195]

4 years? Office v.X came out what... 2.5 years ago? There are a lot of major changes in Office 2004, it's just that most of them are under the hood and thus not really observable.

Anyway, the main thing I like about Excel 2004 over Excel v.X is that 2004 actually seems to remember what size my spreadsheet window is supposed to be... what an annoyance that was in v.X. But otherwise, I'd say Excel seems to be the least modified app, so there isn't much reason to upgrade if that's what you mostly use. If you use Entourage or Word a lot, I'd say the upgrade is worthwhile.

[typ993]

Originally posted by itai195:
There are a lot of major changes in Office 2004, it's just that most of them are under the hood and thus not really observable.

That's just great. The M$ guy over at Ars also claimed that the MacBU had gone through something like 40 million lines of code (or a significant proportion thereof) for this latest update.

HOWEVER, with Excel (the app I use most), there are few things I would consider an upgrade or even working better "under the hood". Those of us who are Excel power users feel the need for some speed and M$ not only failed to deliver on that, they went backwards, as well as broke some minor VBA stuff that worked before (that has always worked just fine on the PC).

Try comparing recalc speed in Excel XP 2003 with Excel 2004. It's pathetic. We have an optimization routine that completes in about 3 seconds on my PC. Takes about a minute on my Mac. Granted, my PC is probably 3X faster than my Mac, but adjust for that and XP 2003 still comes out 6X faster than 2004. And as I pointed out in a post over at Ars, Excel was ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED for the Mac.

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by typ993:
I'm a heavy user of Excel as well and I've got some bad news for you, dude. We've built some Monte Carlo simulation forecasting models that rely heavily on VBA. Before installing Office 2004, I timed a run of this model on Office v.X. After installing 2004, I timed the same run in Excel 2004. 2004 was 30% slower than v.X. I've also found that 2004 is much more susceptible to any kind of file corruption than v.X and will immediately crash as a result.

Bummer, that was one main reason to upgrade - I believed M$ would have improved the speed and compatability of its VBA engine.

Mike

[itai195]

Originally posted by typ993:
And as I pointed out in a post over at Ars, Excel was ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED for the Mac.

As was PowerPoint. Sad, eh?

[macmike42]

Originally posted by Maflynn:
Bummer, that was one main reason to upgrade - I believed M$ would have improved the speed and compatability of its VBA engine.

Honestly, what would make you think this would happen? Can you direct me to any articles? (I am genuinely interested in even rumors of this, seriously) Such a move would amaze me, since keeping VBA on the Mac in an incomplete state is one of the few reasons Windows is the only choice in many environments. Improving VBA on the Mac version would be a move akin to porting Access to the Mac. Sure it's a crappy app that no one on the Mac would ever use given (any) other choice, but billions of corporate dollars are invested in said crappy apps (both VBA and Access), so it remains a giant factor in exactly what works well and what doesn't in Office for Mac.

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by macmike42:
Honestly, what would make you think this would happen? Can you direct me to any articles? (I am genuinely interested in even rumors of this, seriously)

No rumor's no articles. Basically it executed so slow, I was hoping that MS would improve it. They've improved other facets of office why not this. I was wrong unfortunitly.

I did send them an email commenting this.

Mike

[Truepop]

Originally posted by rmongold:
The price and the number of licenses... You get 3 licenses for about half the price of 1 standard edition license. That's pretty much it.

Also the Student and Teacher version can't be used in a commercial environment. supposedly using student and teacher to do your business' taxes or something is as bad as pirating it.

[the_glassman]

I've ditched Office and went with Neo Office J. Not pretty, but it works great and gets the job done.

[joelcpa]

Originally posted by the_glassman:
I've ditched Office and went with Neo Office J. Not pretty, but it works great and gets the job done.

You resurrected a 4 month old thread for this....?!?

[Sharky K.]

Originally posted by joelcpa:
You resurrected a 4 month old thread for this....?!?

better than starting a new one... The issue is still here.

[joelcpa]

Originally posted by Sharky K.:
better than starting a new one... The issue is still here.

...not sure what issue you're referring too...

...but the subject of this thread is Office X vs. Office '04, so in this case it would have been better to start a new thread since glassman is talking about Neo Office...

[Sharky K.]

Originally posted by joelcpa:
...not sure what issue you're referring too...

...but the subject of this thread is Office X vs. Office '04, so in this case it would have been better to start a new thread since glassman is talking about Neo Office...

Maybe the topic starter didn't thought of Neo Office when he started the topic. Keep the discussion open.

[Cadaver]

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Which version is more stable? Office X or Office 2004?
Office X works faster but crashes often on my G3 Beige with G4 ZIF (768 MB RAM), especially when I move frames.

[CharlesS]

v.X had a problem with randomly leaving a blank space where pasted in graphics used to be when printing. That was a deal-killer for me. 2004 seemed to fix it.

Although at this point, if you're considering upgrading, I'd probably hold off until the Universal Binary version is released, so you don't have to shell out again the next time you upgrade your machine.

[tkmd]

I have to agree with Charles. I would wait another 30 days and purchase the UB version. From your specs I see that sooner than later you'll probably be upgrading.

[threestain]

is there any chance of an update or will it solely be making it universal?

[philm]

I do a lot of report writing which involved generating graphs in Excel and copying and pasting into Word. This was fine in v.x. In 2004, the pasted images lose their vector status and become bitmaps. This reduction in quality is a big disadvantage to me. If this issue is important to you, it's another reason not to switch.

[cvbcvb]

Does anyone know when the next version of Mac Office is due? Considering the last version is Office 2004 and it’s now 2006, I thought I’d ask.

TIA,

CVB

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by threestain

is there any chance of an update or will it solely be making it universal?

We're talking about Microsoft here. They'll charge you for the upgrade, for sure.

They'll probably add about 1,000 useless features that 99.99% of the population will never need, use, know about, or care about, in order to justify the upgrade price.