Brief Hands On Report---Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac

After using the Test Drive (demo) version of M$'s Office 2004 for the Mac last week we removed it from our hard drives on Sunday. We did so, not because it is bad software, quite the contrary, but because we use Office v.X as needed and found no real advantage to v.2004 for the work that we do with it.

The only issues with v.X that, if fixed, would attract us to v.2004 are:

1. v.X does not include Microsoft Access;
2. Word v.X is very slow with grammar checking as one types turned on; and
3. With v.X we occasionally get a big red "X" for images in a Windows-developed PowerPoint presentation.

That's it. M$ Office v.X is a superb office suite for the Mac for those who really need it instead of AppleWorks or some other less expensive but less capable or compatible office suite software.

For reasons that M$ has attempted to explain but which we do not accept, Office for the Mac has never had Access compatibility and neither does v.2004. This single deficit is one of the greatest barriers that we know of to using Macs in the enterprise environment. We are really surprised that Apple or some third party vendor hasn't bridged this gap. There are tons of custom proprietary software applications written for M$ Access in the enterprise environment and it stops the use of Macs dead in their tracks. Fortunately, the use of M$ Access seems to be in decline but it's applications will be around for a very long time even if not growing.

Word in v.2004 is slower than in v.X. While we are only accomplished hunt-and-peck typists, not speedy touch typists, M$ Word in v.X is very sluggish for us if checking grammar as one types is enabled. Not only is this not fixed in Word v.2004, Word v.2004 is much slower than Word v.X in several aspects according to this 5/20/04 Bare Feats set of tests.

Finally, we checked several Widows-developed PowerPoint presentations people have sent us that show the big red "X" in place of some images. The big red "X" was gone but the images were blank, not a sufficient improvement for us. While it is possible that the big red "X" conversion to a blank image might not occur if originally viewed and saved by v.2004 instead of v.X, this is a serious bug in v.X that M$ should fix for v.X owners without having to upgrade.

In summary, there are no improvements sufficient to get us to shell out over $200 for an upgrade from v.X to v.2004. Don't get us wrong, we think M$ Office 2004 for the Mac is an excellent piece of software for those who need it or want to upgrade to a Mac OS X compatible version. There are also improvements in v.2004 that others may find significantly useful like its group mode. However, for many, it might be more cost effective to get a discounted copy of v.X if they any be found.