Microsoft Office v. X for Mac

List Price: $716.26

Customer Reviews:

yes, it is bloatware, but it is good bloatware [Posted on 2003-10-22]
To start with, let us accept that Office is bloatware. It is big, relatively unwieldy, and is full of features. A quick scan of the menus and cryptic toolbars almost screams "DESIGNED BY A COMMITTEE".

On the other hand, this is not all bad. I use Word ALL of the time and Excel on a regular basis. I keep trying to find an alternate word processor, so I've download Nisus and iWrite and a host of other toys. Most of these are perfectly respectable word processors, but I rarely get far before I need to use something I'm used to in Word. Sometimes it is image embedding, sometimes it is an obscure cross referencing facility, and sometimes I need to build a table that spans pages and, oh, and, oh yeah, and .... Word has the BEST tables facility. I used to work with a guy called Matrix Breath, so I really got to know tables.

Suddenly, I'm exporting my document in RTF and a promising application has been demoted to "toy". This is actually the upside of bloatware. It's sort of like those toolkits one always drools over in hardware stores with nine hundred ratchet bolt heads, a glistening array of extender bars, and six power grip handles, one for each arm of Siva. Normal humans never need these kits. They may buy them, use one small set of components, then lose a piece and then go out and buy a screwdriver.

My plumber owns four of these, all calibrated. My auto mechanic owns six, because he needs English, metric and Alfa Romeo.

The downside of bloatware is the learning curve. You really have to learn in order to use even 10% of all the features. Did you know there is an equation editor? Did you know that there is a garbage grade drawing program? Did you know that there is an almost lame, but actually useful image processing component? Word v.X can probably edit movies and burn DVDs, but if you can't get to Dungeon Level XVI, stick with iMovie and iDVD.

Yes, you do have to spend your first half hour with Word disabling the "Do What You Think I Mean" features. I learned how to format a business letter back in grade school and I'll insert my own superscripting, thank you very much.

Still, it is no exageration to say that Word is possibly the best piece of bloatware ever written. (EMACS is a close number two).

As for Excel, it too is a fine piece of bloatware. VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet was almost lapidary. It had just enough stuff in it to sell Apple IIs. Lotus 123 started the accretion process and at some point, the planetary disk coalesced into Excel which lets you solve partial differential equations using the Karmarkar algorithm and format the result in cuneiform. It takes two extra keystrokes for hieroglyphics.

I don't even use those little calculator programs anymore. I just keep Excel running - no sweat under OS X - and then, when I decide I didn't mean 2+2, but I really wanted a regression analysis, I already have my data sitting right where it can do me some good.

As for Powerpoint. I haven't used it in years. Yes, so I'm a mutant. Mutants are IN nowadays. Ask Hugh Jackman or Anna Paquin. My niece wanted to make a birthday card and she accidentally started up Powerpoint. Well, it has mutated. You can do collage animation, it supports sound, video, programmatic sequencing and even some lame user interaction. It's no threat to Macromedia, but these features are such time sinks that we might be spared a few bullet slides.

As with everything else in the Office suite, its accumulators crackle with barely restrained power. (Any Doc Smith or IBM 1130 fans out there?)

So, if you are a normal human. Try getting a normal human office suite. Appleworks is just fine. If you need more, more, more, then you should break down and go for Office. It definitely has more, more, more, just like Bill Gates.

As a bonus, the Macintosh version and Windows versions eat the same file formats, so you can freak out Windows users.

HOW TO FIX UNEXPECTED CRASH BUG [Posted on 2003-11-23]
Some very nice person posted this. So I feel it's my duty to spread the word.
You may get a "Word has unexpectedly quit your system has not been damaged" message. You'll see an angry review below about someone who was broken by this problem.

Do the following
1. Open your folder with your user name
2. Open your library folder
3. Open your microsoft folder
4. DELETE the following two files:

Word Font Substitutes
Word Settings (10)

If for some reason you are having trouble finding the files just type them into the folder names into your search engine and you should be able to locate them. Microsoft Word will immediately work again and the files will be recreated automatically.

SPREAD THE WORD (v.X)!

Does the job with some nice features [Posted on 2004-02-12]
Like almost everyone on the planet, I've used Office for Windows extensively and initially I was a bit put off by Mac Office as it does look and feel different (what the hell is Entourage anyway?).

However on working with it more you get used to it, and it has some nice features that the Windows version doesn't.

3+
Entourage - I have really come to like the app - I use it as a replacement for Palm Desktop (Memos), Address Book (it is a little 'richer'), and Mail (it does hotmail as well as POP & IMAP), and everything integrates well.
Ability to mark a doc for followup - Office will give you a reminder, even when it's not running.
It's Office, right? It does almost everything.

3-
While docs are compatible with Windows versions, I have had problems with complex spreadsheets, so I do not think it is 100% perfect.
It is a little sluggish (800mhz G4 iMac, Panther, 512mb).
Entourage's calendar management isn't as good as iCal - can't publish/subscribe, or even import/export data. More generally, Entourage isn't very 'open' - it shares data well with other parts of the app, but not other apps.

Overall, it does what you expect and let's face it, it's the de facto standard for a reason. Expensive thought!

Great Product!! [Posted on 2004-03-18]
Really Great! Microsoft did it. Feature rich software. It really works well than its Windoze counterpart. Price is a bit high, but once you start using it, you won't regret for that. A must have product for Mac fans.

Entourage Falls Down [Posted on 2006-04-07]
I'm a Graphic Designer so I rarely use Word or Excel except for very, very basic tasks, such as copying and pasting text into desktop publishing programs. So I can't comment too much about those programs. The one application I use day in and day out all day long is Entourage.

1. Can't be programmed to accept my company's address book automatically. I have to enter the person's address in order for it to be saved.

2. If you accidentally have the wrong address typed in, well, it saves it anyway and eventually you have a list of wrong addresses to choose from your list of correct addresses. I haven't had the time to figure out how to delete addresses.

3. Tasks? Projects? Clutter tools. I never use them. Don't have the time to figure them out. Don't want to. I actually tried to utilize the Projects wizard and after spending xx minutes setting it up, I had this "That's it?!?" feeling; I didn't find it helpful or useful or intuitive at all. I'll do better to jot project notes on a piece of paper.

By far my biggest gripe is that Entourage makes EVERYTHING an ordeal to set up. I'm NOT a programmer, I don't think like a programmer. I don't have time to spend PROGRAMMING functions that should be built in.

For instance, Entourage does NOT have a basic out of office reply function! To use OoF you have to go to Tools, then Rules, then figure out which specific set of actions go together and in what order and even then it doesn't work. I had to GOOGLE for help because there is nothing about Out of Office reply in the Entourage Help section and the steps I followed based on the directions here: http://homepage.mac.com/barryw/weblog/files/category-6.html weren't even available!! I was flabbergasted and disgusted.

How could they make a function as basic and necessary as Out of Office reply so impossible to figure out or even find? Microsoft is just a huge, lumbering, programmer-minded troll and I can't stand it anymore. If this suite wasn't forced upon my by my office I'd NEVER use it.

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