Filed under: Enterprise
Microsoft road show for Office 2008 coming to town
Getting Office 2008 loaded and running on one Mac is easy enough if you put your mind to it. Getting it loaded and running on hundreds of Macs, with Entourage data to upgrade and users tearing their hair out over macros that no longer work? Bit more of a challenge, to put it mildly. In the interest of supporting the IT pros who are deploying the latest and greatest from the Mac BU in large educational and corporate enviroments, Microsoft is sending key managers and developers out to face their customers (no!) in half-day intensive Q&A sessions.
In addition to the usual draws for techies (free lunch, nice swag) the road show offers a rare opportunity to get feedback to the people behind Office 2008 face-to-face. The upcoming schedule (NYC and Toronto sessions have already taken place) is as follows:
- Reston, VA - Thursday, May 8
- Los Angeles, CA - Tuesday, May 13
- Downers Grove, IL - Tuesday, May 20
- Redmond, WA - Thursday, May 22
You'll need to register on Microsoft's site if you want to participate.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alex said 9:37AM on 5-07-2008
lets be honest...it sucks. Buggy as hell and utterly awful. Incredibly disappointing. And it left me to hanging forcing me to use a PC to do my thesis. :(
Reply
Arlo said 9:44AM on 5-07-2008
Five minutes before reading this, I had a coworker ask me why the custom toolbar in the proposal template I built two years ago wasn't working. Oh, wouldn't you know -- she just bought a MacBook Air and the Office 2008, and the whole thing was developed in VBA. Until today, it was perfectly cross platform in my office. Thanks, Microsoft.
Reply
Jake said 9:45AM on 5-07-2008
That's brave.
I don't know what the general consensus is on Office 08, but I've never been more disappointed in a software package, ever. I can't be alone --- Microsoft is going to have fun with this "Q&A" session, depending on how honest they allow it to be.
My complaints are that Office 08 is very buggy, terribly slow (often slower than Office 04 in Rosetta!), and -- despite my hopes -- has a UI that's actually worse than 04, and falls far short of 2007 on the PC.
IMO, the Office 2007 UI on PC is magical and awesome. I can't understand why Mac BU didn't take this opportunity to further unify the Mac & PC versions of Office with the same UI... I'd have loved to have a Mac-native clone of Office 07. Instead, they gave us a clunky, slow Cocoa/Intel version of Office 04 with a UI that's gone backwards in usability (Excel plotting anyone?).
Ah well, thank goodness for VMWare Fusion w/ Unity. :-)
Reply
scott said 10:26AM on 5-07-2008
I'm not one prone to overstatement. But Office 2008 is literally the. worst. software. I've ever purchased in 16 years of Mac'ing. I'm working from a 2.66Ghz Mac Pro with 8 gigs of RAM, Leopard 10.5.2, and Word takes over a minute to load. Midway through any letter writing, and you get the spinning ball. Save As? Good luck. Another spinning ball. Forget all the new features of Word, you don't have time to explore them because spinning balls.
I was a Entourage power user since day one. Brilliant software. And I waited for greatness with 2008, but the improvements were so minimal, that a week after getting Office 2008, I finally switched to Mail and iCal (and Daylite to increase its power).
If you're on Office 2004, there isn't one reason to upgrade. As others stated, it's actually *faster* than Office 2008.
I give credit to the Mac BU team for having the courage to go out there in the public. But I sure hope they have thick skin. Because anyone savvy in their audience is going to rake them over the coals.
Reply
Kevin Robert said 10:52AM on 5-07-2008
I believe the link is broken to go to the Microsoft Office Seminar session. I would like to sign up so I could rip Microshaft a new one designing a UI that sucked. They finally created nice clean UI for Office 2007 (wow can't believe I just said that- Microsoft making a nice interface...has hell frozen over!) Take that same UI of Office 2007 make it into a theme and make it available to Office 2008 for Mac. Next
Reply
loup407 said 11:53AM on 5-07-2008
I think previous posters are being nice. Office 2008 just.doesn't.work. - I'd pay extra for Office 2004. It's been helpful motivation to use iWork when I can. While the Microhoo! deal collapse might have been a debacle for yahoo shareholders, for yahoo customers; it's a dodged bullet. Anyone really think that the integration wouldn't have gotten screwed up by Microsoft?
Reply
Reclusive Monkey said 12:09PM on 5-07-2008
@Scott: Word takes about 25 seconds to load the first time on my Mac Mini. After that, it takes under 10 seconds (and yes, I am quitting not just closing).
I agree with most of the commenters though; once you get used to it the 2007 UI in Windows is really nice. Its a shame they couldn't bring that over to the Mac. I mananged to get 2008 for Mac through the Home Use Program at work so I got it essentially for free but for once I actually prefer the Windows version.
The keyboard shortcuts seem to be totally different in Excel; as I've been using Excel on an almost daily basis for the last ten years that's really throwing me.
The styles in Word 2007 on Windows are almost at the point where they are so easy to use they are actually useable for the first time; again it was a real shame to see on the Mac that they still have the old style "list" of styles, with no right click option to add the current selection as a style easily.
I think Office is so important to Microsoft's hold on the corporate desktop now, there is no way they are giving the same program to Mac users. As long as the have an OS to sell, don't expect a fully compatible Mac Office.
Reply
Ed said 12:18PM on 5-07-2008
Office 2008 is incredibly slow. It takes me 27 seconds to open Word, compared with 6 to open Pages '08 - it takes Word longer than that just to show the splash screen.
I like Pages better now, and I think Numbers & Keynote are brilliant. Sure, they don't have every Office feature, but give them 2 or 3 more versions and I can see Office being pretty much redundant.
Reply
Gabe said 12:18PM on 5-07-2008
I'll chime in on the complaints of slowness. We upgraded our office of Intel Macs to '08 because of the performance of Office '04 via Rosetta, and boy were we wrong. At least 30 seconds to load any app, and then the first minute of using it is riddled with spinning balls and waiting for text entry to catch up with my keystrokes. I abandoned using Word as a notepad because I kept forgetting my thoughts by the time it fully loaded.
I expected there to be a software update soon after release to fix such a glaring problem, but nothing! Who do we complain to?
Reply
gear said 12:24PM on 5-07-2008
My one complaint is that tasks don't sync with exchange.
Reply
Reclusive Monkey said 12:34PM on 5-07-2008
@Scott: Word takes about 25 seconds to load the first time on my Mac Mini. After that, it takes under 10 seconds (and yes, I am quitting not just closing).
I agree with most of the commenters though; once you get used to it the 2007 UI in Windows is really nice. Its a shame they couldn't bring that over to the Mac. I mananged to get 2008 for Mac through the Home Use Program at work so I got it essentially for free but for once I actually prefer the Windows version.
The keyboard shortcuts seem to be totally different in Excel; as I've been using Excel on an almost daily basis for the last ten years that's really throwing me.
The styles in Word 2007 on Windows are almost at the point where they are so easy to use they are actually useable for the first time; again it was a real shame to see on the Mac that they still have the old style "list" of styles, with no right click option to add the current selection as a style easily.
I think Office is so important to Microsoft's hold on the corporate desktop now, there is no way they are giving the same program to Mac users. As long as the have an OS to sell, don't expect a fully compatible Mac Office.
Reply
Stephen said 1:00PM on 5-07-2008
Ok ok ok...I'll be the lonely Office '08 defender. It's slow to load on my G4 mini, but seems to work OK once you get it going. I'm not noticing any bugs since the latest software update, and overall I think the UI changes from '04 are subtle but make a pleasant difference. Yeah, I know MS Office is extremely uncool in tech-enthusiast circles. It's not as intuitive as other, less expensive office suites, but if you take the time to learn it, it can really pay off. Also, I've had bad luck in the past trying to open Word documents in Pages, NeoOffice etc. when that document includes embedded tables or other complex formatting.
Reply
Alex said 1:58PM on 5-07-2008
No offense Stephen, but if you haven't noticed any bugs, then you would be fine with TextEdit. Thus far I've discovered about 30. The worst one for me is equation editor....oh boy, don't get me started on having a written thesis and it convert everything to pictures, AND NO, I wasn't using an options to convert equations to pictures for any of you smart a's out there! Seriously, its the buggiest thing ever. OH yea, try loading a 100+ page document too and let me know how long you can process before it crashes. Or how long it takes you to scroll to the bottom. And this is on a dual core MBP. They blew it. I second first third whatever all those comments, this is without a doubt the WORST piece of software I've ever used, or seen, on a mac, WORSE THAN 97!!!!!!!!!! Forget cross platform too cause it ain't. Oh, and did I even mention the lack of macro's in Office was one of the dumbest ideas ever. No wonder it was a free upgrade from 2004....
Rob said 2:01PM on 5-07-2008
I don't seem to be able to register. Anyone have an invitation code?
Reply
Stephen P said 2:53PM on 5-07-2008
"No offense Stephen, but if you haven't noticed any bugs, then you would be fine with TextEdit."
Offense taken. Your points are valid, but oh man - the snarkiness, get over yourself. My uses of Word are pretty simple, so I don't have occasion to come across as many features as you do and perhaps as many bugs. I also use Excel for a simple worksheet to balance my (all too) small personal budget and it works without a hitch. I've also taken to using Entourage for my personal e-mail account, and while I prefer the interface of Apple Mail and Apple Address Book, I cannot think of a single time the program crashed or a single time the program did not do something I told it to.
I'm not trying to take away from some of the specific complaints people have been raising about the program, but to call it the worst software ever or to say it simply doesn't work is an exaggeration.
Reply
Alex said 4:00PM on 5-07-2008
Sorry, seriously, didn't mean any offense.
But to call it the worst software ever is in fact, quite easy to do when you rely on Word. Trust me, its no exaggeration to say it doesn't work and doesn't do what its supposed to. ;)
pjm said 6:34PM on 5-07-2008
Truly, astonishingly, bloody awful. Bug-ridden, feature-stripped (Excel is horribly anaemic without VBA and solver), scary software. Perhaps not quite up to the joy that was Word 6.0, but definitely within sniffing distance.
Reply
Ted Simes said 7:58AM on 5-08-2008
I left a comment on Microsoft's MBU web page saying if VBA wasn't supported, I wasn't buying. It's not, I haven't. I have been a regular contributer to Microsoft's profits since Office 4 (yes word 6 - I even forgave them for that). I'm several thousand kms from any of the venues mentioned so if anyone can pass on these comments I would be obliged.
Reply