Monday 19 January 2009

Personal Computing: MacBook Day 3

I've only just picked up my MacBook for the day; too much real work do to!


Seriously though, my next issue is to decide how to edit my standard word and spreadsheet documents.  I've installed the latest version of OpenOffice and it works fine.  At least, it appears to work fine on simple documents.  Who knows how it would work on some of the more complex documents I work on.  So what are the options:

  • Office 2008 for Mac - chargeable
  • OpenOffice
  • Office 2007 for Windows under Fusion (or other)
  • iWorks
Any other options?  I'm happy to take other suggestions, but at first, I think Office under Windows seems to be best choice.  


7 comments:

Devang Panchigar said...

Chris, I think it defeats the purpose to have a MAC and then use Fusion & Windows. I agree that for some apps where they are completely not available on mac, use fusion.

I would think mac office 2008 would be the best choice.

I wrote a blog about me trying to upgrade to mac a while back, I think i am getting closer every day to fulfill it. Its probably another 2 months or so before i think i will buy one, looking forward to a 15 inch. Got my wife one for Christmas and have been experimenting a few things on it to check compatibility etc in work environment.

But i have made up my mind to use all apps on mac and some of those unsupported ones on fusion. But for sure outlook, docs, excel will be all on mac. I even tried evaluating iworks, but everytime you have to send a file to someone you have to export it. Not a good option or atleast brings down productivity.

A new computer that you spend all this time on, has to be sufficient enough to increase your productivity?? Atleast that is what i think!!!! Switching between mac and windows might not bring you there....

Stephen Foskett said...

I am fairly happy with Office 2008 - and it's cheaper than 2007 on Windows! With that said, note that Entourage isn't the greatest - it's WebDAV only for now, though they just released a new beta that adds native Exchange support.

Alex said...

Have been using Mac (MacBook Pro 15" with 4GB RAM) since May 08 – after giving a fair try to Vista.
MSFT Office 2008 - no issues, works fine. iWork '09 is supposedly MS Office compatible; have not tried it myself yet..
I have Parallels 3.0 installed (I don't see any real differences between that and Fusion I guess it is mostly a matter of taste); but have been using it increasingly rare - no real need, just an occasional application here and there (Like DVDShrink – still no equivalent on Mac)

Unknown said...

Check out a product called Crossover which allows you to run Windows apps on an Intel based Mac.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Chris M Evans said...

Guys

Thanks for all the positive comments, I'll give your advice a go.

Cheers
Chris

Unknown said...

One MORE OPTION.... you can also get a copy of Office 2004 for Mac.


Its PowerPC binaries, but they run pretty much fine under the built in OSX Rosetta layer.

Its going to at least be better than Windows Office under Fusion or using Crossover.


We ran Office 2004 Mac on our intel mac's while waiting for Office 2008 to come out for a while and had no issues doing so.


BTW, Office 2008 Mac is even better than the Windows version.

Unknown said...

The latest OpenOffice for Mac isn't great. I'd look at using NeoOffice. Based on openoffice but a lot more stable.