Second half of 2007; Office 2008 is supposed to be out 'any day now', as I recall the announcement.

FWIW, http://www.neooffice.org is a very good alternative, and it's available in both PowerPC or Intel flavors.

Reply

I really hate the way that Microsoft tries to tie you to their products. I have had a Hotmail account for 4 or 5 years now but to access it anywhere but the Hotmail.com site, I HAVE to use Microsoft software. There's no POP or anything.

And Microsoft makes their own non-standard formats when everyone else is managing just fine with the standards, forcing you to buy their software.

And on top of that, they're trying to cripple the Mac version of Office by offering no VBA support. But of course, you HAVE to update because the others aren't Universal Binary.

This is precisely the reason why I have severed all my ties to Microsoft.

Reply

I agree. Office is a sorry program that we are all forced to use. The MBU ought to be ashamed that in late 2007 we are still dealing with Office 2004.

Reply

Oh, thank heavens they've finally fixed the problem with the out-of-date Japanese postal code dictionary! Phew!

But really, where does Office support even American postal codes? All these years there's a ZIP code dictionary in PowerPoint and I've never used it? Yet more bloatware from Microsoft.

Reply

you guys are being harsh. I have yet to come across a better word processor for the mac or pc. OpenOffice is just a bad copy of office (which already isn't the best) and I had a friend who used NeoOffice and complained about it so I gave her a copy of Office. Office for Mac is far better than the windows version... although the newest one with the blade interface is very dandy. But Microsoft Word 04 is fast and efficient even on my 500 MHz G3... unlike Photoshop or some of the truly awful big name Carbon programs for OSX

Reply

"But Microsoft Word 04 is fast and efficient even on my 500 MHz G3..."

It's not quite so fast on Intel machines...

Reply

@ Jeffrey Bergier
MS Office 2003 for the PC is way better than Mac office 2004... i mean, have you seen powerpoint in this thing? And as for entourage - gimme a break... it's not a patch on Outlook.

Now, MSO 2007 on the PC is very nice too. I hope the Mac BU at MS can pull their fingers out and make Mac office 2008 at least 75% as good as MSO2007... and please, FFS, give us outlook - entourage sucks!

Reply

I have my issues with Office 2004, but it's all I have for Windows compatibility. And I've grown to like Entourage 2004 and it's few limitations (like syncing with my Treo 650) for the many things it does good for me.

And it's easy to back up all of my data under Entourage (two files)

I look forward to seeing what Office 2007 can do, but in the meantime, I live with some slowness in exchange for data compatibility and keeping part of my life organized.

Reply