[EDS66]

I just bought Office 2004 standard. Glad to see that Exchange support is much improved. Have not tried to do much else, but Entourage is great. I have access to Free Busy data now.

Anyone else got the new Office. What are the impressions?

[Moogs]

I've dinked around with the Test Drive a little. The new formatting palette seems a lot more flexible and useful in some respects although I don't fully see the utility of dimming the palette after a prescribed amount of time. Seems a little gimmicky to me but I suppose it could be useful if you get distracted by palettes on your screen.

Do me a favor and see if you can replicate some wierd behavior I saw with Entourage. Go into the calendar (for example) and pick a view where you resize the panes to fit your tastes. Now jump to a different calendar mode, then jump back. Did your resize changes go away? I can't for the life of me get the thing to stay put, mode by mode.

Either it's a bug or a really short-sighted design flaw.

[Ã¥sen]

I just installed the Test Drive. Before running the Test Drive I noticed 'Microsoft AutoUpdate' in my apps folder. WTF? I'm sure I never saw this before. And it was set to 'automatic' instead of 'manual'. Is this part of the Office 2004 Test Drive, or was it there already?
It was version 1.1.0 (v040402)
Now it is in the Trash.

[EDS66]

Originally Posted by Moogs I've dinked around with the Test Drive a little. The new formatting palette seems a lot more flexible and useful in some respects although I don't fully see the utility of dimming the palette after a prescribed amount of time. Seems a little gimmicky to me but I suppose it could be useful if you get distracted by palettes on your screen. Do me a favor and see if you can replicate some wierd behavior I saw with Entourage. Go into the calendar (for example) and pick a view where you resize the panes to fit your tastes. Now jump to a different calendar mode, then jump back. Did your resize changes go away? I can't for the life of me get the thing to stay put, mode by mode. Either it's a bug or a really short-sighted design flaw.

Nope, everything seems to stay put.

[Moogs]

Hmm. Well that's encouraging. Maybe one of my Entourage prefs is fubar or something.

[jimdad]

Is the test drive download link on the MS Mac site working? I keep getting "server not found".

[netromac]

Originally Posted by jimdad Is the test drive download link on the MS Mac site working? I keep getting "server not found".

It's working for me.

[jimdad]

Thanks, Netro. seems to be working now. I was just trying to get a head start earlier today before the USA woke up.

[bborofka]

Is it just me, or am I not seeing what the big deal is about Office 2004? To me, it just seems like v.X with more features welded on, things that should have been there in v.X (unicode, long filenames, proper Exchange support to name a few). The apps mostly look the same. They have the same cluttered, bloated toolbars (with some new tools), same overly-complicated Preference windows, and lack adherence to many OS X standards (standard toolbars, dock-awareness, true Quartz text, etc.). In other words, it still feels like a shoddy Carbon port.

I guess the only thing I can see as an important feature of Office 2004 is the Project linking between all the apps. Good for people who use multiple apps to work on the same project. Notebook view is nice in Word I suppose, if only it didn't crash so much.

Other than that, I find it pretty frustrating that Entourage has no way to synchronize your Address Book and iCal, and no RTF composition. If Apple would release a competing word processor to Word (didn't they copyright "iWrite"?) and add better Exchange support to Mail and iCal, I would have no use for Microsoft software. Please Apple?

What's everyone else's experience with Office 2004?

[EDS66]

Originally Posted by bborofka Is it just me, or am I not seeing what the big deal is about Office 2004? To me, it just seems like v.X with more features welded on, things that should have been there in v.X (unicode, long filenames, proper Exchange support to name a few). The apps mostly look the same. They have the same cluttered, bloated toolbars (with some new tools), same overly-complicated Preference windows, and lack adherence to many OS X standards (standard toolbars, dock-awareness, true Quartz text, etc.). In other words, it still feels like a shoddy Carbon port. I guess the only thing I can see as an important feature of Office 2004 is the Project linking between all the apps. Good for people who use multiple apps to work on the same project. Notebook view is nice in Word I suppose, if only it didn't crash so much. Other than that, I find it pretty frustrating that Entourage has no way to synchronize your Address Book and iCal, and no RTF composition. If Apple would release a competing word processor to Word (didn't they copyright "iWrite"?) and add better Exchange support to Mail and iCal, I would have no use for Microsoft software. Please Apple? What's everyone else's experience with Office 2004?

Well:

There are three things about the new office that I consider to be a "big deal".

1) Exchange Support! Entourage is now a MAPI-compliant client and I can have access to my Exchange Server's Global Address List (GAL), fee-busy data, etc. It's not as robust as Outlook 2003, nor does it really support all of the features in Exchange, but it's good enough. I now can offer viable options to my Mac clients who need the collaboration aspect Exchange Server offers.

2). The compatibility feature of Word. Word now checks documents before you save them for compatibility problems with older versions of Entourage and with current/older versions of Word for PC. I think this is great!

3) CPU utilization. It's nominal when an Office App is open but idle.

There are myriads of other features in Office (the new Thesaurus is my favorite), but they are not really all that important from the global stand-point. I am sure there is a ton of other enhancements that I don't even know about. But the three features above are the ones that really stand out as well as the ones that probably swing undecided computer buyers (both corporate and consumer) towards the Mac.

[Chinney]

Has anyone who has used Office 2004 noticed if the fonts look better - especially word spacing and overall look when scaling fonts to different sizes? This is one of my complaints with the original Office for X.

[EDS66]

Originally Posted by Chinney Has anyone who has used Office 2004 noticed if the fonts look better - especially word spacing and overall look when scaling fonts to different sizes? This is one of my complaints with the original Office for X.

I think that's because Microsoft has switched to unicode. You will also notice that's scrolling is now slower -- also because of unicode.

[Chinney]

Originally Posted by EDS66 I think that's because Microsoft has switched to unicode. You will also notice that's scrolling is now slower -- also because of unicode.

I am not sure that I understand. Do you mean that Office v.X has problems with fonts for the reasons you give and you are implying that they fixed it in Office 2004, or do you mean that v.X and 2004 have the same problems with fonts, for the reasons you give?

[Barto]

I downloaded the test drive and saw it still doesn't use quartz text metrics. The metrics seem to have improved somewhat - now it is a shade above terrible.

No deal Microsoft.

[Chinney]

Originally Posted by Barto I downloaded the test drive and saw it still doesn't use quartz text metrics. The metrics seem to have improved somewhat - now it is a shade above terrible. No deal Microsoft.

I wonder if this is what is causing the basic problem with fonts that I have always noticed? If so, the lack of action to fundamentally address this issue a disappointment.

However, could the decision not to adopt Quartz text metrics be due to a need to maintain compatibility between Office for Mac and Office for Windows? This compatibility – which I do acknowledge as an impressive achievement – is a real selling point for Office. Would adopting Quartz text metrics screw this up? Perhaps Microsoft has not found a solution yet. Or perhaps they are just lazy and have no interest in adopting Quartz because they figure that they will get our money anyway.

[Barto]

Microsoft doesn't adopt Quartz text metrics because it would be too much development effort to change the Office engine over - especially after they laid off most of the Mac business unit. Mac office and Win office have never been totally compatible with fonts and words in the right places. If you need that kind of precision, you'll be using LaTeX not Office.

Barto

[Chinney]

Originally Posted by Barto Microsoft doesn't adopt Quartz text metrics because it would be too much development effort to change the Office engine over - especially after they laid off most of the Mac business unit. Mac office and Win office have never been totally compatible with fonts and words in the right places. If you need that kind of precision, you'll be using LaTeX not Office. Barto

Actually, I have found the compatibility to be pretty good in Office v.X, even with fonts. My problem is not that the fonts change or otherwise get screwed up (very rare for me, even in complex PowerPoint documents), it is rather that the fonts don't always display nicely, in Word, in v.X on the Mac. Depending on the display % I choose, the fonts can look squashed or display with too much or too little spacing between the words. This is disappointing, given that I prefer the way fonts look generally on the Mac to those on a PC. I would have thought that MS could do better, given the fine display capabilities in OS X.

I had not heard about most of the MacBU being laid off. Wow! If true, what does that mean about future development for the Mac? The only reason I ever speak nicely about MS is that they still put out a version of Office that works well with the Office on PC that I have to use for work purposes. If 2004 is the last version, then bye-bye MS from me.

[mrmister]

"I had not heard about most of the MacBU being laid off. Wow! "

I hadn't either. And the folks I know who work in MacBU haven't said anything about it--so do you have some substantive data on that?

[Luca]

Is this supposed to be an upgrade that actually justifies an extremely expensive upgrade cost? I see hardly any difference.

Good thing I got Office X for free from my school

[Barto]

There was a blog entry by a guy who used to work there, I can't find it now. It was mostly getting rid of the IE, Outlook etc developers (which makes sense). Still, Microsoft could have chosen to put them to work on a DECENT upgrade to office rather than the half baked one we got.

Barto