back to article MS Office for Mac 2011 out in October

Word up. Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is available at the end of October and consumer prices are cut to bring them closer to its Windows sister. MS Office Mac Buy Office 2008 for Mac between now and the launch and you qualify for a free upgrade when the new version hits the shelves. Retail customers are given the choice …

COMMENTS

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  1. Wibble

    Ow much?

    That's TWICE the price of office 2008. That came with Entourage==Outlook for about £90. Now it doesn't.

    To top that, there's sod all benefit for upgrading. Office 2008 works just fine and 2011 provides very little in the way of substance. It ain't werf it at half (I.e. a quarter) of that price.

    Spinning lying money grabbing bastards.

    1. Wibble

      Messenger...?

      Isn't that a free download? Did they forget to include Remote Access or SlitherLite into the package as they're also free downloads.

      No idea who would want messenger anyway - there's plenty of better IM clients available.

      Yo, you's the spinmeister Monkey Boy dude.

  2. Blue Pumpkin
    FAIL

    Eh ?

    So why would I stump up £250 (best I found) now for Office 2008 Business Edition, only £449 MRRP, for a free upgrade to something that will cost me £180 (MRRP) in 3 moths time ?

    Muppets, every day they seem to be losing it a bit more ...

  3. Robert Ramsay
    Boffin

    I presume...

    "improved user interface" means that crappy ribbon thing that stops me using Wordpad in Windows 7. Does anyone have a 64-bit Windows 7 build of the old Wordpad? I seem to remember they used to give it away as an example program if you bought Visual Studio...

    1. Andy E
      WTF?

      Re: I presume...

      ...you realise that the article was about Office for Mac 2011. Presuming that people who bought Office for Mac 2011 were running it on a Mac, then It would be more than that crappy ribbon (if there is one) stopping you from running Wordpad.

      However, you could run the TextEdit program...

  4. Mark Southee
    Unhappy

    Sods Law

    Guess who bought 2008 on Saturday?

    1. ThomH

      How did you buy it?

      If it was from Amazon or whatever, invoke the distance selling regulations to return it for a full refund, then buy it again to get a receipt with the correct time printed on it. If it was from a real shop then maybe go in and talk to them nicely?

      1. Nigel Whitfield.

        Tricky with software

        The DSRs will only be applicable to a purchase of software (or certain other things including CDs and DVDs) if the packaging has not been opened.

  5. LesB
    Thumb Down

    Not a good move...

    As Wibble[1] says, removing the mail client from the Home version is not a Good Thing. MS have made a lot of fuss about (finally) producing a Mac mail client that's Time Machine friendly, then decline to offer it to anyone who isn't prepared to pay far too much.

    I think I'll pass on this one.

    [1] Good name. Wish I'd picked it first.

  6. Andy E
    Paris Hilton

    Full comparison with Mac Office 2008 required!

    I have been using Office 2008 for sometime now and on the whole it's not bad. I even use Entourage which has -admittedly- very, very, occasionally crashed. But to say its "crash happy" is stretching things a bit. Entourage gets used to service 6 e-mail accounts with well over a dozen rules. There are over 150 folders and about 20 categories. It does its job to send and retrieve e-mail and remind me when appointments are due as well as any Microsoft app did.

    What is a pain in Office 2008 Entourage is backup. There's no integration with Time Machine or an in-built backup facility.

    Paris as she obviously has a headache thinking about those backups...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Entourage with Exchange = fail

      it may work well enough as a standalone client (i don't know as I find Mac Mail good enough) but colleagues using Entourage with a corporate exchange server are far from happy.

  7. Fred 4
    Gates Horns

    Alternatives

    iWork - $39 (usd) when purchased with a computer at education store, $79 straight retail

    open office - free

    either one is as good as or better than MS's ribbon encrusted piece of shyte

    1. Mark 65

      @Fred 4

      But isn't this new version coming with VBA (good or bad take your pick) in it which will allow users to run more speadsheets at home that they use at work?

      Not saying it's a major selling point but some people will find that sort of thing pretty handy.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    same price? big mistake MS!

    Mac users are the sort of people who'll pay more than twice the usual cost of something - so just package it up nicely...nice black or white cardboard box with lots of excessive padding will do nicely...and sell it for the usual markup. they'll buy it in their droves.

    1. ThomH

      Mac users do pay more than twice as much per unit

      Since no Mac ships with Office and I believe Office:Mac falls outside of the normal business site licensing programmes. So every sale is retail.

      1. dylan 4
        Gates Horns

        Wrong on that one - Office:Mac INCLUDED in site licensing...

        ...at least where I work. I could purchase Office Mac 2008 discounted under our business site license "Home Use Program" for all of A$28...if I wanted to...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Great!

    Where so I sign up for in-built scripting languages that can f**k-up my Mac ( or delete/email-out my personal docs ) in a minutes flat, 'cos some script kiddie fancies a good laugh by proxy?

    OpenOffice might be a bit naff, at least I have slightly more faith in it, than Billy and Stevie "Barmy" Ballmer's latest mash-up money-spinner!

  10. FARfetched
    WTF?

    Entourage "crash happy"?

    I've been using it nearly a year, and it maybe crashed once or twice in that time. Performance is light-years better than Lotus Notes, which we replaced at work.

    Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to having Outlook for Mac so I can access archived emails. Can't seem to figure out how to open that .pst file in Entourage.

  11. Barry Lane 1
    FAIL

    Has Redmond even noticed

    the number of versions of OpenOffice - Gooo, Neo, IBM's Symphony, etc - out there on offer for free? My Mac is now free of Microsoft product and it runs superbly well.

    The latest OpenOffice (3.2.1) is a terrific bit of work and it does everything MS Office can do, but without the hassle, inconvenience, expense and crimes against the creative arts of the Redmond version.

  12. Jean-Paul

    Been ruining the beta

    And 2011 is fast, very, very fast. Macros and vba work very well as well. Interesting though they value outlook at £100. It's is the one product I don't use. Give me mail, address book and iCal any day.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      2008 treacle

      I've run every version of Word and Excel for Mac since 1989. Apart from the disastrous Version 6 in the early 90's, 2008, especially Word, are very slow. I've got a Mac Pro 2.66 with plenty of RAM and fast, empty hard drives, yet a 3-page, 2-column table runs like molasses.

      So I'm looking forward to trying 2011, but if it's anything like V6 it'll come off my computer in hours flat.

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Jean-Paul

      Why...

      Very simple since if you use the office products in a professional capacity with a lot of automated integration of meta data that drives other references in the documents, and I haven't even started about macros/vba, you have no choice.

      All the other products will change the advanced layouts, if you are lucky don't strip out the meta data but will mangle up the document references.

      I love pages, but for example you can't even have a document title being referenced in a header or a foot. So if you change the title of a document, you have to manually change all it's uses and now search and replace is not useful for that.

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