Office Mac 2008 Available January 15

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac goes gold, ships next month

Coincidentally, January 15th is the first day of the Macworld Expo.

 

it looks pretty, but for 130$ or whatever it is, ill use Neo.

i have 2004 anyways, lets see what my future req's are.

 

Yeah I don't think I will get it, iWork is good so far. I have office 2007 just in case.

 

I like the current Super Suite Deal, it really is an excellent deal.

 

I look forward to Office 2008... I'm kind of disappointed with Office 2004's lag (due to Rosetta).

 

Hopefully I can adapt to the layout quickly. I'd hate to have to put up with Rosetta forever just to keep the Office 2004 interface.

Now I'm just crossing my fingers that Microsoft can get Mac Messenger 7 out quickly with A/V support.

 

Amen to that! Mac Messenger 6 is way too limited...

 

Yes! Microsoft Messenger for Mac is totally horrible, it crashes on me all the time. I ditched it altogether and just use Adium. Too bad really, if Messenger for Mac was as good as Windows Live Messenger on Windows, I would use it.

 

I'm pretty sure the "ultimate" version or whatever will be much more expensive than that...

Still, Office 2007 is enough of an improvement over OpenOffice that I'd be willing to pay for Office 2008 over NeoOffice...and with academic discounts it should be fairly cheap/free (hopefully).

Tired of booting up Fusion just to use Office 2007 whenever NeoOffice craps out on my documents (which is 90% of the time).

 

Its $64 at my University, and hopefully cheaper through the Microsoft Employee store....I'll get it. I need an office suite, seriously. OOO sucks, and apparently, so does the Mac equivalent.

 

Well, OpenOffice obviously is weak compared to Office 2007, but c'mon, its free!

 

Absolute value does matter at times though . Just because it has a good relative price to performance value doesn't make it really viable IMO.

Otherwise, everyone in this forum wouldn't be using Macs (hey we haven't had one of these flame threads for a while )...

My take on office software is that it's vital enough to the basic functions of a computer that I'm willing to spend a little for it...same with the web browser (although this is more controversial).

I don't hate NeoOffice - I have it installed after all, but I'm very very glad that I also have alternatives to each of the applications in it (so glad Bento came out so i didn't have to invest in FileMaker - THAT would've been a horribly expensive investment).

 

I am torn on whether to go with iWork or Office 2008. I always tell people to go with Office for compatibility, but I am wondering if I could get by with iWork.

 

Get review copies of each for NBR and use those

 

I am using neo office for mac version and I do not use it quite that often, most of the time I am using latex to write my document, though I have another mac with office X for mac installed.
I won't pay 130 bucks for office. It is too expensive for me.

 

Why do mac's get Office so late? The next version (Office 14) is supposed to be out by the middle of 2009.

 

Well, it was delayed (it was expected to be released in fall 2007) to January 2008. But yes, Mac versions of Microsoft products are released later (wonder why ). Like Microsoft Messenger for Mac is terrible.

 

Too bad NBR isn't influential enough to get review models in advance like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue does .

 

I was thinking that Microsoft BU actually isn't "late" with Office 2008 even with the delay until January. If I'm not mistaken, Office 2007 was supposed to launch in October or November 2006, before they were both pushed back to January 2007. So if Microsoft BU had planned a certain amount of separation with the Windows version, they had the wiggle room to make that delay.

It's really too bad that Office 2008 doesn't include VBA macro support. Technically this "feature" puts the Mac version ahead of the Windows version since VBA has been end-of-lifed by Microsoft. Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is supposed to be the replacement and is available for Office 2007. I haven't heard that Office 2008 will support VSTA which is disappointing so I may well be forced to keep Office 2004 or at least Excel 2004. I don't suppose Microsoft will release a major update, say 12.1, that adds back VBA or at least VSTA support? If they needed more time to port the thing and didn't want to delay Office 2008, fine, launch now, but add later. At the very least, they should keep the old PPC VBA engine, and have it available when the user manually opens Office 2008 in Rosetta mode, kind of like how Shockwave only works if you start Safari in Rosetta mode.

In terms of Mac Messenger 7.0, I remember reading somewhere that the Mac version is actually going to use the newer A/V implementation currently being used by the Windows corporate client. The problem is that we want to talk to Windows personal users o) so the hold up is waiting for them to update the Windows Live client to support the new A/V stack, which they've been planning for a while. So if it's any consolation we beat Windows to the punch and they are holding us back.