Office 2004 buy or not to buy

[Krzysztof M.]

Hello,
I'd like to ask you about is it Office 2004 worth to buy nowdays? I
need a text editor and a spreadsheet but more for technical purposes
where equation editor and possibility to create graphs for data with
Y-errorbars are important. But my question is how long my documents
from Office 2004 will be readable? New realease of Office for Mac is
coming, how long Microsoft is going to support the older one usually?
I'm still not sure about these things and I am trying to avoid expences
as much as possible, because 400$ will make me a hole in my wallet for
sure ;-) Second thing, which is pros in this case, Office 2004 have
more patches already released and I think that can be much more stable
that the new release, at least till Microsoft prepare patches for new
release. Do you agree? What is your advice?

Thanks a lot for any help.

 

[CyberTaz]

The latest info from MS << http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/ >> indicates that
2008 is to ship in January - that's delayed 2-6 months from original
projection, which was "second half" of this year. How "on-time" &
"error-free" '08 will be when it ships is always questionable with a new
release, although I'm sure PC Office 2007 has had some impact on making '08
more reliable than it would be otherwise - of course, '07 still has some
quirks of its own which have yet to be ironed out.

I don't presume to tell you what you should do, but if it were me and I
needed pro caliber word processing *&* spreadsheet capability I'd shop
wisely for a good deal on 2004. It is better than a safe bet that there will
be an upgrade path to [reduced price for] 2008 - and the upgrade *doesn't*
have to be made the day '08 ships. I typically don't upgrade *immediately*
myself - I prefer to have some of the initial bugs worked out for me MS
upgrade offers are typically valid for an indefinite period - IOW, someone
with 2001 or X can still upgrade to 2004.

Further, support for 2004 will most likely be continued for at least 2 years
beyond the release of '08 - not to mention that one of the "first lines of
support" is right here in this forum which will continue indefinitely
Also, upward compatibility of 2004 files is a virtual certainty - it's
*backward* compatibility that typically presents some degree of limitation
or 'challenge'. Based on what I've seen of 2007, even that shouldn't be a
serious problem for most files.

The other option is to go with one of the Open Office derivatives or Apple's
iWork package (US $79) as a free/cheap stopgap measure, but it's uncertain
any of them will satisfy your requirements... I'd investigate thoroughly
before committing to either. Plus you'll wind up paying full retail for '08
when you do buy it. My instincts tell me that the combo of a good deal on
'04 now + the u/g price of '08 will come to about the same or less than the
outright cost of '08 - but that's just my personal guess

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Krzysztof,

it's very hard to answer your question. Do you need a word processor and a
spreadsheet application right now? In that case, Office 2004 certainly is a
very good option. Do you own a previous version of Office, such as Office
v.X? In that case, you might want to hold off until Office 2008 ships early
next year. Do you absolutely need to use Microsoft products right now? In
that case, free solutions such as NeoOffice might be a convenient temporary
solution until Office 2008 comes out.

I would imagine that the old binary file formats used in Office versions
prior to 2007/2008 is going to be supported for a very long time. I don't
really know what Microsoft's policy regarding support for file formats is;
however, support for Microsoft Office 2004 is going to continue until 13
October 2009, according to this website:

<http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=1&y=16&p1=2490>

Microsoft usually offers mainstream support for their products for a period
of five years after the original release. Have a look at this site for more
detailed information:

<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/gp/lifepolicy>

During that period, Microsoft is going to keep releasing updates and maybe
even service packs for Office 2004. Microsoft has also announced that they
are going to release an update shortly after Office 2008 becomes available
that will allow users to save their documents in the new Office Open XML
format. So if you are really worried about the longevity of your files, you
can buy Office 2004 and then convert your documents to the new file format
as soon as the update's been released.

<http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2007/05/15/get-converted.aspx>

As far as the stability of Office 2004 vs. Office 2008 is concerned: it is
impossible to make any statements on this for the time being since Office
2008 has not been released yet. You'll have to wait a few more months before
users can start testing the new applications.

Hello,
I'd like to ask you about is it Office 2004 worth to buy nowdays? I
need a text editor and a spreadsheet but more for technical purposes
where equation editor and possibility to create graphs for data with
Y-errorbars are important. But my question is how long my documents
from Office 2004 will be readable? New realease of Office for Mac is
coming, how long Microsoft is going to support the older one usually?
I'm still not sure about these things and I am trying to avoid expences
as much as possible, because 400$ will make me a hole in my wallet for
sure ;-) Second thing, which is pros in this case, Office 2004 have
more patches already released and I think that can be much more stable
that the new release, at least till Microsoft prepare patches for new
release. Do you agree? What is your advice?

Thanks a lot for any help.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[Phillip Jones]

I know others have answered and I haven't even read the other replies.

It depends upon where your coming from.

If this your first venture into Mac then at least until the first of the
new year and maybe longer Office2004 is what you'll have to use.

If you are using Office X Limp a long until you get to office2008 launch
time.

If you are one of the .0001% that will need VBA (Visual Basic) and
Macros. The by all means get office 2004 and leave it installed when you
get 2008.

Because I use OSX.3.9 on my Desktop machine and after 7 tries upgrading
to OSX.4.x and failing I will have to leave Office 2004 on my Desktop
and upgrade to Office 2008 on my Lap top which has X.4.10 on it. But
when I do put it on my Laptop I will either kill or archive my Office 2004.

I'd love to get one of the new xenon using Intel Mac Towers. But right
now just don't the bucks to do it. Maybe next year.

Hello,
I'd like to ask you about is it Office 2004 worth to buy nowdays? I need
a text editor and a spreadsheet but more for technical purposes where
equation editor and possibility to create graphs for data with
Y-errorbars are important. But my question is how long my documents from
Office 2004 will be readable? New realease of Office for Mac is coming,
how long Microsoft is going to support the older one usually? I'm still
not sure about these things and I am trying to avoid expences as much as
possible, because 400$ will make me a hole in my wallet for sure ;-)
Second thing, which is pros in this case, Office 2004 have more patches
already released and I think that can be much more stable that the new
release, at least till Microsoft prepare patches for new release. Do you
agree? What is your advice?

Thanks a lot for any help.

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[Krzysztof M.]

Hello,
I'd like to ask you about is it Office 2004 worth to buy nowdays? I
need a text editor and a spreadsheet but more for technical purposes
where equation editor and possibility to create graphs for data with
Y-errorbars are important. But my question is how long my documents
from Office 2004 will be readable? New realease of Office for Mac is
coming, how long Microsoft is going to support the older one usually?
I'm still not sure about these things and I am trying to avoid expences
as much as possible, because 400$ will make me a hole in my wallet for
sure ;-) Second thing, which is pros in this case, Office 2004 have
more patches already released and I think that can be much more stable
that the new release, at least till Microsoft prepare patches for new
release. Do you agree? What is your advice?

Thanks a lot for any help.

Hello,
Thank's a lot for all your answers guys. They are really useful for me.
My Mac experience is above 1 year now, but prior that I have been using
Linux for 5 years. I know quite well Open Office and I started playing
with iWork'08. Each of these packages have some pros and cons
obviously, but non of these is really ready for some scientific work.
In OO Calc has lack of function that allow me to create Y-errorbars
based on data from specified columns from a data file. Writer is quite
well, but have some compatibility issues especially when you move a
file to Windows environment and a file has a big number of tables - I
always hear complaints from Windows users to whom I send a OO files.
But as I said it pretty good IMHO. I don't worry about VBA support too
much, but I start thinking how Apple Script support will be good for
Office 2008 and how easy VBA scripts are going to be translatable.
So maybe I have to double think about it - 400USD is again not so small
amount of money for me in comparison to OO which is free and iWork (Oh,
not for scientist, isnt't it?) for 79USD.

 

[Kenneth Cohen]

Krzysztof, if you qualify, you can buy the student-teacher version of Office
2004.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/go/promotions/default.aspx

Ken

 

[Krzysztof M.]

Krzysztof, if you qualify, you can buy the student-teacher version of Office
2004.

I really would like to be a student once again, but I graduaded a
couple years ago
So what is available for me it's only Standard one I guess.

 

[little_creature]

Hi,

just to add my own opinion. As far as I'm concerned I would go for
office 2004. Why? Because I think these are one of the best. I like
the way the UI is done, I love the formatting pallete, where
everything is bellow your hand. I do not like the interface from
office 2007 which is likely to be similar to Office2008,too much, but
I have heard that people are getting used to it easily. Further I'm
working cross platform, some co-workers use the older PC office, so I
need to preserve the VBA ability.

For serious work I get Matlab 2 weeks ago. We are starting to become
friends - HE is so patient to absend minded accademics which wants to
read 2row from vector )) Still nicely repeating that I'm out of the
dimessions. I get this as student version at 100$, as I'm still
student, but as far as I asked I can continue to use it even when I
finish my studies - I can use it for my self-education. Of course I
cannot use it for commercial purposes or research publications&etc.
For that I can use copies at UNI. They were really nice to me, at on
the top the guy from UPS who has delivered offered me a coffee ))
That was very good deal. So do you speak Matlab? ))