Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(116)
4 star:		(62)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Let's face it, no matter how much you love your Mac there are times when you might find yourself wishing it was a PC so you could send a Word file to your PC using friend (who doesn't understand the joys of PDF). Well Microsoft, never being one to miss an opportunity, has delivered the full Office Suite for Mac and designed it to take complete advantage of OS X. What that translates into is simply the best Office Suite experience anyone can have.

All the apps (Word; Excel; PowerPoint; Entourage) are included unencumbered and many have features and enhancements that can ONLY be found on the Mac. Excel features customized keyboard shortcuts and the ability to create transparent charts. Word now features easy one button access to all your contacts in Entourage as well as the handy Data Merge Manager. PowerPoint now allows movies and features full compatibility with QuickTime. The layout and feel of Entourage is much improved over it's PC counterpoint Outlook.

At first Microsoft had said that this Student & Teacher version was non-upgradeable(The only difference between this and the more pricey Standard Edition), but they have since changed their minds to allow upgrades as long as you buy before the new version is released. You even get a three computer license! Finally, here's the proof that Microsoft can be generous when it wants to.

I've had this suite for many months now and have never loved using these apps more. Sending and receiving Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents is a breeze and I've never once had an issue opening a document sent from a PC user. Beyond the functionality, I love the way all these Microsoft apps look like part of OS X in full Aqua glory. If you need to communicate with PC users or simply want the best of both worlds, you can't do any better than running Microsoft Office v.X Student & Teacher edition on a Mac.

I bought Office 2004 for the Mac as an upgrade to Office X, even though I was not really having any problems with the older version. Office 2004 has been nothing but problems. Excel and Word crash more frequently. There are random but frequent hard drive accesses for no apparent reason. There are problems with removing password protection of Excel files. Worst of all are the font-related bugs in Word that are even worse in Excel. Excel 2004 screws up the letter spacing of fonts as well as line spacing for wrapped text. Everything is bigger by 10-30%. This doesn't seem to be a problem at first, especially if you are only entering single words or short strings into individual cells. However, I have dozens of forms that were laid out in Excel X that include wrapped text in merged cells. If I open these documents in Excel 2004, the font spacing is all screwed up, requiring complete readjustment of each form. Even worse, Excel 2004 is not WYSIWYG. The screen layout isn't the same as what gets printed. I find this wholly unacceptable for a major business suite, especially when it worked OK in the previous version. Don't be fooled by Microsoft's promise of bug fixes in their recently released Service Pack 1 for Office 2004. They may have fixed a few bugs but not the major ones I have issues with. Check out the comments by users at Macintouch.com, under Office 2004. As for me, I intend to uninstall Office 2004 if possible and reinstall Office X.

I recently threw out my virus-infected PC and bought an Apple Powerbook. I was concerned that the switch would limit what I can and cannot do with my computer, but Microsoft Office for Mac has made the transition much easier, as I have been a Microsoft Office user for years. The Mac version runs much smoother than the Windows version, (as does the entire computer.) No problems with lock-ups, no lost data, and the Mac version seems much easier to use than my Windows version. Very straightforward, yet powerful enough for a full range of use, from simple to very complex.
So, for anyone out there thinking of making the switch from PC to Mac, do yourself a favor: get Microsoft Office for the Mac.

I moved to Mac after more than a decade of PC use because I was sick of getting "application not responding" messages. In 9 months of owning my iBook, I think I had one message of this sort, that is until I installed Office for Mac. Welcome back to Microsoft!

Don't get me wrong, the applications are well designed and presently there is no other office suite that can compete. They look great and aside from a few weird functionality issues I have been happy with Office. But just like Windows, these programs crash all the time. At least once a week Word or Entourage will simply freeze. At lot of times this happens when I am cutting and pasting between the two.

Anyway, be forewarned, if you are a Mac zealot, you might enjoy Office but be prepared to be even madder at Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy bashing Microsoft with the best of them, and I think most "upgrades" from Redmond are a waste of money at this point, but Office 2004 for the Mac is not one of those cases.

It is simply a must have upgrade.

What I love about the new upgrade:

1. Long file names
2. Better change/edit management
3. Lots of new features in PowerPoint (although Keynote still looks better displayed)
4. Much cleaner interface

I'll give credit where credit is due. This is a fantastic update, one I am glad I paid for.

Only one beef, to be balanced, is MS should work on speeding up the apps in the .1 release.

I am surprised to find myself impressed with a Microsoft product. I vowed I never would be, but I have to admit that the Macintosh Business Unit of Microsoft has truly released a must have product. I bought the upgrade as soon as it came out and so far it has only crashed once (while doing an import into Excel). If you have Office v.X then I doubt it's really worth an upgrade. Unless you see one of the new features as a must have v.X will work well for quite a while. However, if you use another product I must impress upon you how wonderful this suite actually is. The new project center in Entourage is very handy if you have problems with keeping files together and the new notebook view in Word is especially useful if you often take notes in meetings. Presenter Tool's in PowerPoint is also a great feature. Messenger is useless, but you already have iChat so you don't even have to bother with it. I have found that all of the applications feel more "Mac-like" with a more appealing interface. While a completely Apple built suite would win me over, I doubt I would be satisfied with any other companies product. If you are in a business or academic environment, then this product is a must have. So, while I think that all of the rest of Microsoft's products put together are worth about $5, this is simply a must-have product unless you already have v.X.

I had initially ordered Office 2004 primarily for my sister's iBook G4. The Office 2004 Student / Teacher edition includes 3 licenses --a pleasant surprise indeed! As a graduate student myself, I was able to install one license on my Dual G5. So far, in my usage, Office X 2004 brings more refinement to all four programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage). I especially like the fact that Office now tracks your recently used documents, making it even easier to locate and work with your documents. Initially, Office X 2004 seemed to be a bit more sluggish than its predecessor, however the recent Service Pack update seemed to restore the speed I had grown accustomed to from the previous release. I'm more of a casual Office user -- I use Word to write papers, Excel to keep track of various accounts, and Entourage for a secondary email client. In short, if you are a casual user of Office, and have a previous version, I wouldn't recommend getting the update. However, if you are in the academic arena and don't already own Office for OS X (especially if you're making the move over from a PC to Mac), I'd recommend the Student / Teacher version of Office 2004 X wholeheartedly.

Coming from 15 years of working with Windows, it is sheer joy to work on Mac OS X (yes, I am one of the highly vaunted switchers! - No, i did not just recently grow a brain... I work as an IT professional, and until OS X, the Mac did not allow me to do my job as an NT admin. I got laid off due to the glut of Windows IT pros and am changing careers to web design, where the Mac easily outshines windows in every single imaginable way!). I have since decided to get a BS BS in Interactive Media Design at Art Institute of Pittsburgh to step my career up further, and the school requires I use MS Office for some projects. I have OpenOffice, but hate... ABSOLUTELY HATE, the Java interface, so I decided to buy the student version of MS Office for Mac despite my years of utter distaste for MS Office as a whole.

Once installed, I was really quite pleasantly surprised to see that MS Office 2004 for Mac is ten times better than MS Office 2003 for Windows. Much cleaner, more logical interface, less cluttered, though stil la long ways off from clean and uncluttered. Some things are a little odd, but nothing I could scream about.

Overall, MS-Office 2004 for Mac is easily the very best MS-Office suite ever (I have not even considered Office 2008 for Mac as I do not need it at all - see next paragraph), and is made that much better by the total lack of that incredible pile-o-crap, Outlook. I can't say anything about Entourage, as I have no need for it, so I have never launched it, and most likely never will.

But, is MS-Office the best office suite ever? Hardly! Since Apple's iWork '08 includes the Numbers spreadsheet program with the slick, simple and surprisingly powerful Pages and KeyNote, it has definitely become my choice for best office suite, hands down. In fact, after getting a free trial of iWork '06 when I upgraded to Tiger in 2005, I went out and bought a copy (it's a measly $79), and then again upgraded to iWork '08 when it came out and have not needed MS-Office in way whatsoever since as it opens, edits and saves Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, which is actually more than I would ever need.

Updated to reflect upgrade to iWork '08

After getting my new MAC laptop for student and Mac computer for office, found that I could not communicate with business world with attachments for e-mails as well as the fact that the Professors would only accept homework in a word format. So I went to PC magazine did investigations there for the Microsoft Office 2008 and found many big problems MAC users were having with 2008 version. Went to the great Apple Support Chats with users and found huge amount said they wish they would have stayed with their 2004 version because the computer with 2008 was constantly crashing and slowing down and nothing but problems. So I can say fabulous 2004 version, no problems, hasn't slowed down computer. And attachments with my e-mails are so easy. This product you can't live without if you are a student or business person.

Microsoft makes the best office suite - period. However, I still do believe that the price is a bit of a rip-off. I have been using Open Office (Openoffice.org) which is developed by Sun Microsystems and is FREE. It is also compatible with MS Office - you can save the files in Word, PowerPoint etc. format. The more I use it, the more I wish I had it during my undergrad days. If money is not your concern - MS Office is definitely the best productivity suite out there. However, if you are a student and wish to make presentations or documents for school/university work I would definitely recommend Open Office as you simply cannot get anything better for free and it shall suit all your needs. I mean at the end of the day - you are graded on your work not how the slides come flying in. But Open has the flying slides too - though the MS ones still look cooler:) I particularly liked exporting Word Files to PDF format within Open Office. For the record I am not anti-Microsoft - they have some good products - I just wish they would make them more affordable. I hope this helps.