Customer Reviews

Microsoft Word 2004 Upgrade (Mac) [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Even with the telephone assitance of a Microsoft Word expert, I have been unable to upgrade my Word 98 1 version to the 2004 Version, so the product has been no good for me.

There's something good happening at Microsoft (believe it or not): The Mac unit there seems to function very well. Probably because it's a small, self-contained mini-organization that is not particularly beholden to the Gates machine. Whatever the reason, Office 2004 for Mac is better than the Windows version. It's more stable, far less prone to attack (and therefore more secure), and it is far more versatile visually than its XP counterpart. Word is the star of this show, with its improved formatting palettes and its notebook feature. You can right-click on a graphic within a document and save it as a png or jpg (you can't do that on Word for Windows); and of course, thanks to the Mac interface, you can turn any doc into a pdf through the print menu (this still can't be done in XP, though it may become possible in Vista, though that isn't clear yet, with the legal struggle between MS and Adobe ongoing).

Weaknesses: as always with MS products, your trade-off for robust features is that the product is a memory hog. Have a machine with (preferably) 1GB or more of RAM and a G4, G5, or Intel processor to get the most out of this product, and little of the hassles. I haven't extensively used Entourage, the email client, because after a brief tour of it, I decided I was satisfied with Apple Mail, and Entourage had nothing significant to offer me. I don't do IM, so I don't know a thing about the IM client here. But Excel is very solid on the Mac platform, and Powerpoint is also fairly easy to work with, though I still prefer Apple's Keynote for presentation software.

If you need MS Office capability on your Mac, this is a good product to have, but get the Student and Teacher's edition and save a lot of money. I've written several books in MS Word for Mac, and it has performed very well with them on a G4 machine with 768MB of RAM. But if your hardware is older or your budget's tight, look into Google's free Googledocs, which incorporates Google spreadsheet and the Writely word processor. You'll need a broadband connection for that to work well, but if you do it's a great alternative to the MS product.

For years I have been addicted to the Mac Computer in its various forms. Apple Works, Microsoft Works was my choice of word processors. Then I tried Microsoft Word beginning with 1998. When Microsoft Word 2004 came out, I considered upgrading. Finally with MacBook Pro, I took the refreshing plunge! What a joy to click on the blue M and know I will have a document that IS quickly and easily professional and accurate. Communication has never been easier!

I haven't used all the features yet, but it seems to open almost any Windows<TM> doc file. The only problem I have is that it won't install on my TiBook and it won't register with Microsoft.
I'm using Word 2001 on my TiBook.

This is a very capable word processor, but in its features becomes somewhat complex and not always very intuitive. For those who are
fluent in its use, there are almost no limitations to the work that can be done with it.

I was unable to use the product because of Microsoft's inflexible policy on upgrades. For the upgrade to work, they require you to have the old disk, period. I had the old manual and my owner's ID no. but they would not accept this as adequate proof of ownership. When I pointed out to their customer support rep that the other major software companies all accepted this proof, she made an insulting remark and cut me off.