Office 2008 Beta Test

Anyone know when the beta test is going to be public? My macbook pro is going to be here in about 2 weeks and I don't want to waste money on Office 2004 so I would beta test 2008 and then buy it when it's released. Anyone know?

 

Not sure there will be a public beta test - I don't recall one for Office 2004. If you're expecting something like the public beta of Office 2007, I don't think its going to happen.

I haven't even heard of a precise release date beyond "second half of 2007".

 

So does that mean i have to spend $350 on Office 2004 now and then again in the "second half of 2007"?

 

If you're a student, get the student/teacher edition for $150 - $25 rebate.

 

You don't have to buy Office 2004. You can just use the 30 day trial and then purchase Office 2008 when it is released.

 

Indeed. I think if I was in the position of the OP, I'd try and make do with something like NeoOffice until Office 2008 becomes available, rather than worry about investing in Office 2004.

 

i would do the same but use openoffice.org

 

Yeah, I haven't actually tried out the new OpenOffice stuff yet........ not sure how it compares yet to NeoOffice (an older project to do a native OS X OpenOffice).

 

Thanks knp for that suggestion, good idea and I will def use the 30 day trial. However I work in real estate development and I use Microsoft Excel every day and it is def a must for me to have it's features. If I used Open Office or Neo Office do they have the same functionality as Excel? Will my colleagues be able to read and edit my .xls files? Are the programs similar to Excel or will there be a large learning curve? Thanks for the help.

 

Yeah, OpenOffice (note that NeoOffice is just a Mac-specific version of OpenOffice) is designed to basically be equivalent to MS Office in many ways, so if you're familiar with and use Excel, OpenOffice will generally work well with what you already know and with .xls files.

Of course, you'll want to experiment with that a bit (you can go ahead and try out OpenOffice right now; it should work the same on your PC as on your Mac, for the most part) to make sure it works with your specific files.

But I think it should work in a pinch; who knows, you may even find that it works well enough you don't even need to bother with Office 2008.

 

Do any of you use Open Office as your main office suite? If so how does it compare to Microsoft Office?

 

im quite sure the 30 day trial doesn't let you save or print...I could be wrong though.

 

Actually in terms of the Mac centric version it's NeoOffice. It's the best bar none. I have used it and I can't believe you get so much for free. The only reason that the Microsoft version of Office cost so much is because you are actually paying for the license and not the software.
The only caveat about NeoOffice is that it is slow to load at startup and Powerpoint presentations don't run as fast as MS Office. For spreadsheets and Word documents NeoOffice is the the best. What's even better is that it supports the new XML file format for Word documents.

 

I do use NeoOffice as my main office suite, until Office for Mac 2008 arrives. I'll tell you, text documents will be fine, but if you're into detailed graphic Powerpoint presentations, NeoOffice will not be the same as PowerPoint at all. Depends on your tasks. If you plan to just type up lots of text documents, NeoOffice will be enough. If you work with large spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, Office for Mac will be the way to go.

Microsoft Office for Mac doesn't activate its 30-day trial until you start it. So don't activate the trial until you actually need to run Office. Just a reminder.

 

What Sam said for the above. When comparing software, I like to, at least at the outset, compare them side by side independent of price (free or otherwise) to get an idea of how they match up to each other in terms of function if price wasn't a factor.

For example, I'm not wholly satisfied with Base in Neo/Open Office. Access 2007 is by no means a great database, but it suffices for small database needs. Of course, Office 2008 won't even have Access, so it's a moot point.

Also, there's a heavy java component in openoffice, which is unfortunate.

As far as styles and lists go, I actually think MS Office beats Open office as well. The many-layered style system of openoffice can be daunting and a bit annoying at times (then again, I hate Word's style system too). Not quite as good as Wordperfect for certain types of outlines and lists (formatting is a nightmare for long documents).

Also, as mentioned above, startup isn't great. This is less of an issue for Neo Office than Open Office, and not a huge drawback in the long run though. What is a drawback though is how integrated all the separate components are - you're not running just Base or Write, you're running "NeoOffice" and just happen to have those components open. When Neooffice crashes (rarely), it's the entire thing that crashes, not just one component.

If you put price into the equation though, it's certainly nice to have simply because it's free. I wouldn't use it exclusively however - it's nice to have either MS Office or Corel as well just in case.

 

I will admit, I have never used NeoOffice or OpenOffice, but what usually separates MS Office from its competitors is advanced features, and
no other program uses more advanced features than Excel. Of course, try it out, see if it will fulfill your spreadsheet needs, at least until Office 2008 arrives.