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MikeD · May 11, 2004, 07:27 AM

I just shipment notification from Apple. I hope it's a good upgrade!

Mike

ryju · May 11, 2004, 07:50 AM

Originally posted by MikeD:
I just shipment notification from Apple. I hope it's a good upgrade!

Mike

Congrats

Colonel Panic · May 11, 2004, 07:56 AM

mine also shipped, on the 10th. should have it today.

starman · May 11, 2004, 08:15 AM

CRAP. I didn't put my order in yet.

/me scrambles.

Mike

gorickey · May 11, 2004, 08:25 AM

Come back with initial thoughts/reviews/build #'s...

bbales · May 11, 2004, 10:20 AM

Hmmm -- I ordered through amazon. No action yet.

mitchell_pgh · May 11, 2004, 11:02 AM

Originally posted by gorickey:
Come back with initial thoughts/reviews/build #'s...

And naturally your strip show like photos of you unpacking the disks...

mitchell_pgh · May 11, 2004, 11:03 AM

This is me slowly inserting disk one in to the slot...

cwagar · May 11, 2004, 01:36 PM

Originally posted by gorickey:
Come back with initial thoughts/reviews/build #'s...

Word is 11.0 (040408)
Powerpoint is 11.0 (040330)
Entourage is 11.0 (040405)
Excel is 11.0 (040329)

Purchased at the Northpoint Apple Store, today at lunchtime. Alpharetta, Georgia. They had been out of the box for about 5 minutes.

They had the Standard, Standard Upgrade, and Edu versions available.

gorickey · May 11, 2004, 02:35 PM

Originally posted by cwagar:
Word is 11.0 (040408)
Powerpoint is 11.0 (040330)
Entourage is 11.0 (040405)
Excel is 11.0 (040329)

Purchased at the Northpoint Apple Store, today at lunchtime. Alpharetta, Georgia. They had been out of the box for about 5 minutes.

They had the Standard, Standard Upgrade, and Edu versions available.

Thanks!

Webscreamer · May 11, 2004, 02:44 PM

what's address to the Torrent?

::ducks::

Horsepoo!!! · May 11, 2004, 02:44 PM

Did Office stop sucking? Please say yes.

schk · May 11, 2004, 03:59 PM

Is there any product activation with the new office?

mitchell_pgh · May 11, 2004, 04:04 PM

Originally posted by schk:
Is there any product activation with the new office?

Are you talking about a key or something more like the Quark/Photoshop/XP BS?

Colonel Panic · May 11, 2004, 04:21 PM

its too early to say if it stopped sucking, and it definitely has more eye-candy, but i can say that:

1) things seems far more responsive (on a 1ghz 17 pbook). Office v.X got mighty sluggish at times, so far Office 2004 feels zippier with data entry, scrolling (keyboard scrolling in Excel is no longer brutally slow), etc. Entering and editing text in the Excel formula window is no longer a test in patience.

2)some new features are very useful. the new Word track changes bubbles come equipped with a Check/X Box to accept or reject changes. makes this loads faster, don't know if this is in the latest Windows office.

3)long file names are supported, finally. thank god.

all in all, seems like a real improvement so far. the devil is in the details with Office, though. one annoying new bug could change everything...

Severed Hand of Skywalker · May 11, 2004, 04:35 PM

Does entourage support sheets and are the buttons customizable so you can get rid of all the useless ones?

typ993 · May 11, 2004, 04:38 PM

How about the

red X problem when exchanging PowerPoint or Word files containing graphics with Windoze? For example, charts produced in Excel with vertical Y-axis text and copied as a picture into Word or PP always show up on the PC as a red X in place of the graphic. This drives us crazy when we need to send PP files to clients on Windoze.

cwagar · May 11, 2004, 05:00 PM

Originally posted by schk:
Is there any product activation with the new office?

It has a key, just like previous versions. It did not activate over the 'net.

Exchange support in Entourage is now all handled over the WebDAV link instead of being a split IMAP/SMTP/DAV situation. I'm not sure if I like that yet. It has to poll the folders quite frequently to look for new mail. Not cool while on battery/wireless. However Entourage is much improved, but not radically so. (Best part is the three pane view and the notification window when new mail arrives).

Excel's new view is cool, so you can preview how things lay out on the page. Better than I imagined from the keynote demo.

No idea about the Windows graphics in Powerpoint, I didn't run into that problem much and don't have a reference file to check.

dtriska · May 11, 2004, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by typ993:
How about the red X problem when exchanging PowerPoint or Word files containing graphics with Windoze? For example, charts produced in Excel with vertical Y-axis text and copied as a picture into Word or PP always show up on the PC as a red X in place of the graphic. This drives us crazy when we need to send PP files to clients on Windoze.

I've had that happen a few times. Right-clicking and selecting something like "Background�" and then clicking Cancel seemed to refresh the slide so that the image came back.

Cadaver · May 11, 2004, 10:00 PM

Originally posted by typ993:
How about the red X problem when exchanging PowerPoint or Word files containing graphics with Windoze? For example, charts produced in Excel with vertical Y-axis text and copied as a picture into Word or PP always show up on the PC as a red X in place of the graphic. This drives us crazy when we need to send PP files to clients on Windoze.

Though I don't yet have my copy, Office 2004 reportedly has a Mac-Windows compatibility checker you can run your files through to prevent these things from occurring.
I think the red X 'feature' occurs when Windows chokes on an embedded graphic file that is Mac-specific. Like a Mac-encoded TIFF vs. a generic/Windows encoded TIFF. This only happened to me once, and that was when I mistakenly added a bunch of Photoshop TIFFs to a PowerPoint file, when I meant to add their JPEG equivalents. Windows balked at the TIFFs, while the Mac versions (Office 2001 and X) handled them just fine.

quietjim · May 11, 2004, 10:18 PM

Have my copies of Office 2004, I'll post a reaction once I get the installation done. I'm new to Office so bear with me.

MikeD · May 11, 2004, 10:21 PM

Just finished setting it up on my PowerBook. No complaints so far, I just wanted to make sure it didn't screw up any of my old files I had and that's okay so I'm okay (For now). Entourage seems a bit better and overall everything is better integrated. The track changes feature has always been there but this time, I think you can link your changes to IM but with MSN Messenger that it comes with.. I don't use MSN but iChat so....

CharlesS · May 11, 2004, 11:43 PM

I don't suppose that this version comes with the proper Mac keyboard shortcuts (command-left or control-A to skip to beginning of a paragraph, command-right or control-E to skip to the end of a paragraph, Home to jump to the top of the page, End to jump to the bottom of the page) without having to set all that stuff up manually.

Oh, and I don't suppose this version finally caught up with frigging SimpleText's feature set and added a "Find Again" command.

Did it?

(please?)

malcolmj · May 12, 2004, 12:24 AM

I hope it's better then Messenger. Messenger 4.0 really sucks the big one.

AJ · May 12, 2004, 04:12 AM

Does option-delete now delete a whole word in Entrourage (like it does in word)...

That has been driving me crazy for YEARS!

AJ

Diggory Laycock · May 12, 2004, 06:23 AM

Does it include the new Virtual PC?

MikeD · May 12, 2004, 07:09 AM

Originally posted by AJ:
Does option-delete now delete a whole word in Entrourage (like it does in word)...

That has been driving me crazy for YEARS!

AJ

No, unfortunately not. And VPC isn't on there either. I think summer for that one...

Mike

gorickey · May 12, 2004, 07:22 AM

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
Does it include the new Virtual PC?

VPC ships with Office:2004 Professional and is supposed to hit stores on June 17th...

AJ · May 12, 2004, 10:04 AM

Originally posted by MikeD:
No, unfortunately not. And VPC isn't on there either. I think summer for that one...

Mike

Oh my. The number of times i have requested that bug be fixed. It is a wonder if they actually do listen. Option-delete in every macintosh app is a great thing, but MS choose to ignore it.

His Dudeness · May 12, 2004, 10:54 AM

I got an email the other day from Microsoft saying that my free upgrade is delayed until 31 May for some reason... anyone else getting the free upgrade get this notice?

KP* · May 12, 2004, 11:24 AM

Originally posted by gorickey:
VPC ships with Office:2004 Professional and is supposed to hit stores on June 17th...

I think it's more likely July 17, as my order status says it will ship approximately July 19th. Would be great if it came in June, though!

sbc · 12:30 PM

KP*, is it already available to order? Where did you purchase it from?

sbc · May 12, 2004, 12:57 PM

Already found my answers!

gorickey · May 12, 2004, 01:03 PM

Originally posted by KP*:
I think it's more likely July 17, as my order status says it will ship approximately July 19th. Would be great if it came in June, though!

You are probably right and I just got my months mixed up...

Thanks.

mitchell_pgh · May 12, 2004, 01:11 PM

I'm still waiting for the blow by blow install photo fest...

I know someone is out there...

Mithras · May 12, 2004, 01:19 PM

So does it include OneNote? Or are the note-taking features rolled into Word?

gorickey · May 12, 2004, 01:22 PM

Originally posted by Mithras:
So does it include OneNote? Or are the note-taking features rolled into Word?

Rolled into Word from what I have read/seen...

Toyin · May 12, 2004, 01:24 PM

jeez, I ordered this from the Apple edu store yesterday (standard shipping) and I got it today! Talk about fast service. I haven't installed it yet however.

Basilisk · May 12, 2004, 02:45 PM

Anyone care to comment on Entourage's Junk Filter? I'm hoping that they've added a Bayesian filter, but the limited screenshots I've seen make it appear they haven't done much at all in this area.

If they haven't improved it, can someone check to see if the new Entourage removes the limitation that AppleScript execution in a rule forces the "Ignore further rules" option? At least with this limitation removed the outboard junk filters (SpamSieve, etc.) become more useful.

Thanks,

Alex

mgl · May 12, 2004, 10:39 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
[B[Oh, and I don't suppose this version finally caught up with frigging SimpleText's feature set and added a "Find Again" command.

Did it?

(please?) [/B]

Open Word X. Choose Tools > Customize. Click the Commands tab. Click Edit in the left list. Scroll down to Find Next in the right list. Drag Find Next to the Edit menu in the editable menubar near the top of the screen and drop it below the Find command or wherever you like it. Click OK. Now you have Find Again just like SimpleText. If you want a keyboard shortcut for it, click Keyboard before clicking OK. Click Edit in the left list. Look for Repeat Find near the bottom of the menu. Assign it any keyboard shortcut you want.

MartiNZ · May 12, 2004, 11:13 PM

I know this might sound like quite an ask, but does Word now correctly handle pasting / inserting PDFs? In v.X it horribly pixelated them in printing!

The easiest way to test this would be to paste a PDF into a word document and then save it as a PDF again. If the result still looks like a PDF then Office 2004 might just support the default picture format for OS X

!

philm · May 13, 2004, 09:58 AM

Originally posted by MartiNZ:
I know this might sound like quite an ask, but does Word now correctly handle pasting / inserting PDFs? In v.X it horribly pixelated them in printing!

Great question. Can anyone answer this?

andybrawer · May 13, 2004, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by philm:
Great question. Can anyone answer this?

It still horribly pixelates them

benb · May 13, 2004, 01:37 PM

How does 2004 do with other keyboard layouts?

I use Dvorak-Qwerty command as my keyboard layout and v.X horribly screws that up. Sometimes it applies the Dvorak key to a commmand-key combination, and sometimes it will apply the Qwerty key. And sometimes commands don't work at all.

For example in the Dvorak layout command-; is save (which corresponds to command-s in qwerty). But command-, is not close even though it corresponds to command-w in qwerty. Even more aggravating, command-w does not close, but brings up preferences, like command-,.

Piece of crap. Just work one way or the other, CONSISTENTLY.

itai195 · May 13, 2004, 01:43 PM

Originally posted by Basilisk:
Anyone care to comment on Entourage's Junk Filter? I'm hoping that they've added a Bayesian filter, but the limited screenshots I've seen make it appear they haven't done much at all in this area.

I'm also curious about Entourage. If it can match mail.app's junk filtering then I might just switch to it now that it has Outlook 2003's column view. Probably not though, as I have little use for the calendar and contact list, unless it's possible to sync those with my Sony Ericsson phone.

Anyone familiar with OneNote want to comment on Word's note taking view? I'll get Office 2004 anyway, but just curious how they compare.

typ993 · May 13, 2004, 03:24 PM

Yay! The red X problem when pasting graphics from say, Excel into PowerPoint and then attempting to view on Windoze (and vice versa) appears to be gone! That was a major pain in the ass.

The bad news, at least with Excel, is that it appears to be much slower in calculating. My company developed a forecasting model in Excel that does Monte Carlo simulation. Running a simulation in Office v.X took 12 minutes, in 2004 almost 16. That is a pretty substantial difference (33%)!

I had restarted my system prior to running both tests.

MartiNZ · May 13, 2004, 03:28 PM

Originally posted by andybrawer:
It still horribly pixelates them

Oh ... great!

While I can't say I'm totally surprised, it would have solved a lot of problems, it would seem to be a reasonably straightforward thing and well, it just makes Word not quite as good as TextEdit

. They're just lucky that there are some other CATCH-UP features in there, or it would be pretty easy to pass up the upgrade!

His Dudeness · May 13, 2004, 03:36 PM

Well, my free upgrade finally shipped...

MartiNZ · May 13, 2004, 04:18 PM

Originally posted by typ993:
Yay! The red X problem when pasting graphics from say, Excel into PowerPoint and then attempting to view on Windoze (and vice versa) appears to be gone! That was a major pain in the ass.

The bad news, at least with Excel, is that it appears to be much slower in calculating. My company developed a forecasting model in Excel that does Monte Carlo simulation. Running a simulation in Office v.X took 12 minutes, in 2004 almost 16. That is a pretty substantial difference (33%)! I had restarted my system prior to running both tests.

Well thanks for giving us the good news first! That second, bad part is really shocking. Excel X was already way slower in calculation than Excel XP - my iBook 800MHz G3 can barely keep up with the P2 350MHz PC that I'm using at work

. I was really hoping for a great speed up there

!

Just what have they made better, I find myself asking. It seems (to me) that they put far more effort into new 'features' that most people won't be too worried about, than they do into fixing blatantly broken things. Bring on Cocoa AppleWorks!

Excel is really the only office app that we don't have at least some sort of alternative to now as well....

CatOne · May 13, 2004, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by itai195:
I'm also curious about Entourage. If it can match mail.app's junk filtering then I might just switch to it now that it has Outlook 2003's column view. Probably not though, as I have little use for the calendar and contact list, unless it's possible to sync those with my Sony Ericsson phone.

Anyone familiar with OneNote want to comment on Word's note taking view? I'll get Office 2004 anyway, but just curious how they compare.

Word's note taking view is pretty simplistic... it will work for checklists and general outlines though.

But it absolutely pales in comparison to "good" notebook software -- I've been using Circus Ponies Notebook for a few months and it is GREAT. You can store anything in it, and it scales to very large docs, because it just stores everything in a package (like a .app folder), rather than tries to stuff it in its own format.