Worth switching to Office 2008?

S

Simon G

Hi,

Am currently debating whether a switch is worth it for me. I am using
Word and Excel quite a bit, and even more so, Entourage. In it - as a
single user with no need to Exchange and all - I use the calendar and
email primarily; the to-do is too primitive (sorry for the strong word;
look at OmniFocus for instance), and the Project Center is not overly
useable.

Is it worth upgrading? Are there any real tangible benefits that will
outweigh the many problems I am seeing here?

Thanks,
Simon
 
D

D

Hi,

Am currently debating whether a switch is worth it for me. I am using
Word and Excel quite a bit, and even more so, Entourage. In it - as a
single user with no need to Exchange and all - I use the calendar and
email primarily; the to-do is too primitive (sorry for the strong word;
look at OmniFocus for instance), and the Project Center is not overly
useable.

Is it worth upgrading? Are there any real tangible benefits that will
outweigh the many problems I am seeing here?
Click to expand...

Not really.

To dos are better in that practically anything in Entourage can be
made into a todo and these and task appear in a consolidated list. My
Day just gets in the way IMO (but you may like it). If I were you I'd
wait until Microsoft gets its act together on a trial version and see
if it's any better for you. Word and Excel have a few extra whistles
and bells but if you are an everyday user you may not ever look at
them once the novelty wears off. I tried to use Entourage again (used
to use it all the time in the 2004 version but gave up because of
flakey sync performance and I use Apple's Mail, iCal and Address book
which lack the integration of Entourage but are stable and sync well
across various Macs that I use.
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

I'd wait on the trial version (maybe sometime this summer?) and make an
informed decision based on your workflow and needs. Tangible benefits
depend on whether *you* personally use them, and the loss of VBA has
done not-nice things to Word and Excel.
 
K

Keysaw

I stayed with 2004. None of the bugs that were bothering me are fixed,
and exchange support was removed from the home & student users
version. Also, the sync services have been messed up (from what I read
here) and I don't want problems syncing with my Smartphone.

JMHO,
Keith
 
A

Aaron Marks

Hi,

Am currently debating whether a switch is worth it for me. I am using
Word and Excel quite a bit, and even more so, Entourage. In it - as a
single user with no need to Exchange and all - I use the calendar and
email primarily; the to-do is too primitive (sorry for the strong word;
look at OmniFocus for instance), and the Project Center is not overly
useable.

Is it worth upgrading? Are there any real tangible benefits that will
outweigh the many problems I am seeing here?

Thanks,
Simon
Click to expand...

There is one really simple thing that makes upgrading completely worth
it. Do you have an Intel Mac? If you do then it is completely worth
upgrading since Office 2008:mac is so much faster than it's 2004 PPC
native little brother.

Now that Office 2008 is Universal Binary you don't have to worry about
annoying things like slow downs while scrolling through large
documents. It really just depends on how much you value your sanity
while doing productivity tasks.

Consider just purchasing the $150 home version if you don't need
Exchange support.
 
E

Ed Kimball

I stayed with 2004. None of the bugs that were bothering me are fixed,
and exchange support was removed from the home & student users
version. Also, the sync services have been messed up (from what I read
here) and I don't want problems syncing with my Smartphone.

JMHO,
Keith
Click to expand...

Me too. The speed and other improvements don't outweigh the loss of VBA as
far as I'm concerned.
 
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