Office Mac Pro 2004 English CD

I'm a recent switcher to Macs having seen the light and enjoy using it for web development, browsing, and the like.

Office is an essential product for anyone who needs to communicate with other people. Everything that Office 2004 does, it does reasonably well. It's the bits it doesn't do that really frustrate.

Call me stupid, but I hadn't noticed that Entourage isn't Outlook. I had naturally assumed that you could simply transfer my years of email and contacts from Outlook to Entourage.

We all know what assume does.

Let's leave my feelings about this as expletive deleted.

There's no Access database application. OK, nobody said there was, but the term 'Office Professional' normally means Access is supplied. Silly me, I should have checked first.

The Professional refers to the additional Virtual PC software. I knew this would be slow on my 1.5GHz G4 Powerbook, but not geologically slow! According to the registry, it's emulating at 300MHz! This is too slow to run even Internet Exploder, let alone run Visual Studio. I've tried to install Windos 98 as this will be less processor intensive, but alas, I failed as it won't recognise a floppy disk.

Using it is also a complete pain. MacOS intercepts many of the function keys, and the Mac doesn't have a WinKey (WinKey+E = Explorer).

In all, Virtual PC is like snake oil, just say no.

BTW, there's no Intel version of Virtual PC and the current version doesn't work on Intel.

So, let's turn back to the core Office 2004 software. It works as expected with a few quirks.

Firstly, Word doesn't crash. Unlike my PC which crashes every few minutes with one particularly large, complex, important and vital document. This is probably due to the *lack* of macro support in Word/Mac. Having said that, I can now edit this document which probably pays for the purchase of the Mac and Office. Hmm, maybe I've got this wrong; maybe I should be trying Open Office on the PC.

Secondly, PowerPoint is different to the PC version. OK, there's some small differences, but I've come to rely on the three-way-view with the left pane being the thumbnails of the presentation. On the Mac you only get the outline view on the LHS. The keyboard mappings drives one insane at times.

I've had one mysterious problem with a screenshot getting hosed between saving it in a PowerPoint presentation on the Mac and opening it on the PC.

Entourage is OK, but it's got some strange UI issues. For instance you can't reply all using the keyboard. Sorting the columns takes more 'mouse strokes'. And remember, Entourage won't read/write to a PST which severely limits its effectiveness in a heterogonous environment.

MS will eventually release a Universal binary that is compatible with Intel and PowerPC. This is likely to cost money and may have some upgrades.

As for the core components, sure, it does look better on a Mac, it is more reliable on a Mac (maybe), but I'm not convinced it's any faster (it seems that saving large word and PowerPoint documents takes a little longer on the Mac)

For anyone in business, Office is an essential tool, so buying it is a no-brainer. For people outside... Well, maybe look at Open Office and save yourself some money.

Conclusions.
You don't need the Professional version. There can't be anybody who needs a 300MHz processor emulator. Save yourself some time and money (and don't pay Microsoft) by buying the standard version.

It gets three stars as there's no 2.5. Where the core components work, they work well. I think it's really let down by Entourage's absence of an import/export utility to Outlook and PST support.

It's also half a package as Virtual PC doesn't work. Hence I'm known as "Glenny two lappies" and have a stoop from carrying two of these beasts of burden.

This is a good product, allows you to use familar microsoft programs and share documents with windows users,

HOWEVER before buying it bear in mind that the new version (office 2007) will hopefully be released around July, I bought this item because I need to use Word but I realise I will be forking out another £200+ later this year to get the new one :-(

Office 2004 for MAC for people with G4's, G5's and everything else for MAC is a useful piece of software for people whom send documents to others whom may use Windows based PC's. The compatability is smooth and documents are kept the same. A very good piece of software for businessmen whom are dedicated to MACs but need to send spreadsheets,presentations, or word documents to others via e-mail as attachments! Recommended to all MAC users.