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Chooglin' · Mar 1, 2009, 01:50 PM

This is one of those mysteries now that Apple has shifted to Intel. Why would anyone buy Office 2008 when you can run Windows Office 2007 through a virtual machine? Office 2008 is a crippled version of office without vba and has a weird email client, yet people will actually pay money for it. Bizarre.

turtle777 · Mar 1, 2009, 02:13 PM

Originally Posted by Chooglin'

This is one of those mysteries now that Apple has shifted to Intel. Why would anyone buy Office 2008 when you can run Windows Office 2007 through a virtual machine? Office 2008 is a crippled version of office without vba and has a weird email client, yet people will actually pay money for it. Bizarre.

Uhm, as compared to the *free* Windows Office 2008 version ?

-t

TETENAL · Mar 1, 2009, 03:01 PM

I don't think Microsoft has ever said you should buy Office 2008 over 2007. I'm sure if you buy Office 2007 as well as a copy of Windows to run it in, they are quite content.

bishopazrael · Mar 1, 2009, 03:05 PM

And wait. Last version of office on the mac was 04. It goes from 04 to 08. So if you're working in windows... but you're here.....

it makes my brain hurt.

goMac · Mar 1, 2009, 04:19 PM

I switched to iWork. No reason for me to support Microsoft when they came to Intel way late, still ship shoddy software, and they expect me to pay way too much money for it.

Haven't had any problems so far, I should probably move to 09 soon...

ooninay · Mar 2, 2009, 01:32 AM

I'm no big fan of Office 2008 but on the other hand, running Windows in a virtual machine just to be able to run an Office 2007 program seems like a lot of overhead unless you need VBA or Access or one of those other things that 2008 just doesn't have.

64stang06 · Mar 2, 2009, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by Chooglin'

This is one of those mysteries now that Apple has shifted to Intel. Why would anyone buy Office 2008 when you can run Windows Office 2007 through a virtual machine? Office 2008 is a crippled version of office without vba and has a weird email client, yet people will actually pay money for it. Bizarre.

Yet, paying for a copy of Windows, a copy of Office 2007, and a copy of either Parallels or Fusion is so much cheaper.

-Q- · Mar 2, 2009, 02:28 PM

I'll take "People who haven't thought their clever plan all the way through" for $100 Alex.

See the above post for a great reason why people aren't running Office '07.

EndlessMac · Mar 2, 2009, 04:36 PM

The other issue is that not every Mac owner has made the upgrade to Intel computers. I also would rather use NeoOffice which has opened every Microsoft Office file I have come across so far, but of course everyone has their own preference in which program they will like.

Person Man · Mar 2, 2009, 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by bishopazrael

And wait. Last version of office on the mac was 04. It goes from 04 to 08.

Um, how is that any different from Windows? Last version of office on the pc was 03. It goes from 03 to 07. A difference of... 4 years. Which is what the difference between 04 and 08 is.

But... VBA will be back in whatever the next version of Mac Office is.

cgc · Mar 3, 2009, 09:55 PM

I have no need for VBA, don't like NeoOffice (or OpenOffice v3), and don't think $19 through my employer is too much to pay for Office '08 for my Mac.

olePigeon · Mar 3, 2009, 10:35 PM

I'm wondering who's going to buy Office 14. It's going to be ad supported. Just what I need, bouncing "free iPod" banners while I'm trying to write a paper.

Veltliner · Mar 3, 2009, 11:01 PM

As far as I know, "Snow Leopard" will have Parallels built in.

The issues of the Mac version of Microsoft's Office have been widely publicized.

I wonder, if, after a switch to Snow Leopard, anybody will buy a Mac version of this software at all. Or, differently put: what would be the downside of running Windows software on your Mac? Slower? I mean, apart from the fact that Windows software doesn't look good from the interface design point of view.

On the other hand: you can get Office for Mac 2008 including Expressions Media DAM software, for 200$ at B&H. That's a pretty good price.

Art Vandelay · Mar 3, 2009, 11:39 PM

Originally Posted by Veltliner

As far as I know, "Snow Leopard" will have Parallels built in.

Where on earth did you get that idea?

Mac User #001 · Mar 4, 2009, 01:10 AM

Originally Posted by Veltliner

As far as I know, "Snow Leopard" will have Parallels built in.

The issues of the Mac version of Microsoft's Office have been widely publicized.

I wonder, if, after a switch to Snow Leopard, anybody will buy a Mac version of this software at all. Or, differently put: what would be the downside of running Windows software on your Mac? Slower? I mean, apart from the fact that Windows software doesn't look good from the interface design point of view.

On the other hand: you can get Office for Mac 2008 including Expressions Media DAM software, for 200$ at B&H. That's a pretty good price.

WIshful Thinking Post Of The Year™ Award.

Person Man · Mar 4, 2009, 02:14 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

I'm wondering who's going to buy Office 14. It's going to be ad supported. Just what I need, bouncing "free iPod" banners while I'm trying to write a paper.

I'm sure there will be ad-less versions available for a higher price.

Veltliner · Mar 4, 2009, 11:04 PM

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

Where on earth did you get that idea?

In California.

Must have been wishful thinking.

pcryan5 · Mar 5, 2009, 08:12 PM

Originally Posted by Chooglin'

Office 2008 is a crippled version of office without vba and has a weird email client, yet people will actually pay money for it. Bizarre.

To edit Excel / Word / Powerpoint files in native format on the road.

Might just be me but I find Excel (where I spend 75% of my day) better then Numbers.

Besides it costs next to nothing via MS Enterprise Agreements.

cgc · Mar 5, 2009, 08:59 PM

Originally Posted by pcryan5

Might just be me but I find Excel (where I spend 75% of my day) better then Numbers.

Excel is the crown jewel of Office. I tolerate Word (it's slow on my MacPro) but prefer Nisus Writer Pro. Excel is much better than Numbers...for now...

besson3c · Mar 6, 2009, 02:36 AM

Has anybody tried running the Windows version of Office in WINE/Crossover Office?

JKT · Mar 6, 2009, 06:16 AM

I got Crossover for free during the one day give-away that they had last year and I have Office 2007 installed as a bottle, but I haven't used it more than a few minutes and thus I am unable to provide any feedback on it.... Tell you what, as I am working from home today, I'll give it a go and see how I get on - first launch seems to be good:

Anyway, wrt to the OP's proposition, running Office in Windows XP under a VM on my iMac has significantly better performance than Office 2008 running 'natively' under Mac OS X. That is how truly terrible Office 2008 is. Biggest waste of money I have ever embarrassed myself by spending, even if it was only £12 from my work's HUP.

besson3c · Mar 6, 2009, 09:43 AM

If it does indeed work fine in WINE/Crossover you should fine the performance there better than Office in a VM

JKT · Mar 6, 2009, 10:12 AM

I've only been reading and reviewing some work (with track changes) in Word so far, therefore I haven't been taxing it too much. Apart from a slowish initial launch, performance is good on the whole and certainly a damned sight better than Office 2008 - I had to LOL when 2008 was the slowest version on my Mac to display a file corruption bug in my document (a tracked-change citation converted to a half page of gobbledygook when I tried to accept it, and this happened near instantaneously in 2007 in the VM and in Crossover but took a few seconds in 2008).

Overall it works well enough, but I have had a few issues with it, one of which is a show stopper for me if I can't find out how to solve it:

Symbols aren't being displayed in the correct font - checking them in my VM version and in 2008 shows that they are getting preserved OK, so it is non-destructive to the document, but that doesn't help me to see them properly! I think the file might be a Word document created on a Mac originally as the font is Symbol when I view it in 2008 or 2007 in my VM, so it is probably just a missing font from my Crossover bottle that is causing the problem.

JKT · Mar 6, 2009, 10:14 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

If it does indeed work fine in WINE/Crossover you should fine the performance there better than Office in a VM

For what I do in Office, I honestly don't find its performance to be impacted at all in a VM, so there isn't any perceptible difference for me between the Crossover and VM versions.

besson3c · Mar 6, 2009, 12:23 PM

Well, the big impact is the RAM footprint that is required to run Vista. If you run Office in XP this is obviously much less of an issue.

turtle777 · Mar 6, 2009, 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

If it does indeed work fine in WINE/Crossover you should fine the performance there better than Office in a VM

I did, it works ok.

However, I still prefer Office 2004 for Mac over any Windows Office via Crossover or VMWare.

-t

pcryan5 · Mar 6, 2009, 01:59 PM

Originally Posted by turtle777

I still prefer Office 2004 for Mac over any Windows Office via Crossover or VMWare.
-t

Why is that over Office 2008?
Thanks

Person Man · Mar 6, 2009, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by pcryan5

Why is that over Office 2008?
Thanks

Probably because, as has been stated multiple times in this thread already, Office 2008 has no Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro support, and even though Office 2008 is intel-native and 2004 is not, 2008 is still slower on intel hardware than 2004 is running via Rosetta PPC emulation.

JKT · Mar 6, 2009, 02:28 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Well, the big impact is the RAM footprint that is required to run Vista. If you run Office in XP this is obviously much less of an issue.

No question about it - running Vista would be a total waste of time. XP works well enough and is much better for a VM than Vista.

Well, I didn't use it as much as I hoped I would today, but here are a few observations:

1. Keyboard shortcuts are seemingly confused; it wouldn't recognise either Mac or Windows shortcuts for moving through and selecting text! However, this is also true in Parallels, so I’m not sure what the issue is here - perhaps it is because I use Spaces and this captures control-arrow left/right before Word 2007 can.

2. On a related note, it doesn’t get on well with Spaces (but neither does Word 2008) and often gets confused as to which Space it is currently within when you are command-tabbing back and forth with other apps.

3. Display of symbol fonts was incorrect (should be an alpha in the screen shot below) but, when opening the file saved in Office 2007 under Crossover in Word 2008 (or 2007 in Parallels), the correct symbols are present. Probably a font issue related to the document originally being created on the Mac (which inserts symbols using the Symbol font and not as a character from the original typeface). I'll have to ask at Code Weavers if there is a solution to this.

4. Windows are not Dock aware when maximising, so status bar gets obscured.

5. It wouldn’t display the help files from MS (known issue according to CodeWeavers).

6. Works with TypeIt4Me (yay!).

7. Printing works but doesn’t launch your Mac printer in the Dock - however, if you have it open already, the print jobs do show up but all are called (stdin).

8. Unsurprisingly I suppose, it creates Windows temp files in the same folder as your documents (i.e. ~filename.doc). If it is as awful as Word 2003 for Windows is, it will fail to properly remove about 20% of these when you quit, thus littering your folders with useless files. However, I had no problems with that today - if I carry on with it, I'll see if this does or does not happen as frequently as it does in WinWord.

9. Dialogues are displayed as ugly X11 windows (example below). However, the main window renders itself and its fonts as you would expect of a normal app.

10. Service Pack 1 of Office 2007 is not compatible with Crossover yet and this is what you get if you try to use the Update feature of the app itself, even if it were compatible:

To summarise my brief experience of it, and ignoring the symbol font problem for now, it seems that I would quite happily be able to use this full time. However, I'll try and use it again on Monday to see if there are any other issues I've missed this time around.