// VC dot com

Just recently, there is a leaked-beta version of Office 2008 for mac platform.
The final version is scheduled for release in mid-January 2008.
Office 2008 will be the first version supplied as a Universal Binary . The previous version is known as Office 2004.

The beta version had been installed in my machine, Hackintosh. Please don’t ask me where/how I get it. This is just for a sneak-peak.

Honestly, I like the mac platform’s layout more than windows platform. On the other hand, I really feel Microsoft like to “mimic” Apple’s products. Why? Just compare to Vista and Tiger (Mac OSX 10.4). Guess what? Office 2008 has the “similar” layout as Apple iWork. Notice the trend?

- Mount the mac image (dmg) as usual
- Double click the office installer to install and 1.0Gb plus of harddisk space is needed.
- It takes like 15-20minutes for the installation to complete
- 5 icons will add to the dock.
- It will automatically show up a “start-up” window

Word:mac

This Word is a mixture of Microsoft Word and Publisher in windows platform. It has a feature which is “Notebook“. It creates a notebook layout. Users can type in the contents; for tablet users, users can scribble whatever images or ideas into this “Notebook“. In my case, I use mouse to scribble my nickname.

Apart of that, there is not much thing is to mention or nothing new here. Just let you know, I have not use Office 2004 for mac before.

As for the layout, (for mac users) it is “exactly” similar like iWork ‘08:Pages. Of course, there are few things that Microsoft added, such as animation with all the icons and animated-transition in Word 2008. One tiny little thing which I find it interesting. It is the opacity or transparency. In the “navigator” bar, it is with 70% transparency.

Lastly, it is quite buggy as expected. Why? It is still a beta. I’m not so sure how a real mac handle this; for my machine, I find it very lag and slow working in Word 2008. It is Universal Binary, yet it is still slow like snail. I have used Pages, it works nicely as well as Open Source, Neo Office.

Excel:mac

Personally, I do not use Microsoft Excel much. I only have learn/use once in my first semester of my degree major.Normally I just view the excel documents.

This Excel, one new feature which is “Sheet”. It lets users to make a new style of sheet in the excel document. If I am not mistaken, Excel:Office 2004 does not have this feature. It also has the same important features like formulae equations, formating and etc.

As for the layout, (again) it is similar like iWork ‘08:Numbers. Anyway, Numbers is still not good for end users. Why? Numbers does not support complex formatting and formulae. It will cause a big mess or a big headache for “Pro” users.

Lastly, it is still the same. Slow in my machine. I prefer to work in Neo Office.

PowerPoint:mac

Again, I seldom use Microsoft PowerPoint. I only use for my presentation which is a simple layout.

Microsoft had some competition when iWork ‘08:Keynote. Microsoft have gained some ground back with PowerPoint 2008. PowerPoint now is more user Friendly, and is taking advantage of the Gallery in all Office 2008 Applications.

Lastly, it is still same and the layout as well. Nothing much to mention.

Entourage:mac

Entourage is just like Microsoft Outlook in windows platform. But, in mac, there already have Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Unfortunately, it takes a long long time to open it, nearly 1-2minutes for my machine. With this Application, I think that Microsoft tried to pack too much into one application.

Apart of that, it got a widget, “My day“, like application for Entourage that tracks your day, but not your e-mail.

The layout is not very space efficient and it is slow to use. On top of it all, Microsoft had to put a little window that showed all the attachments before showing the actual message. I would try to avoid this.

Overall

I am expecting application like Microsoft Access for mac. If I am not mistaken, it is because of some framework problem, .net framework in windows platform which does not related to mac platform. This new version of Office 2008 does support new extension(.docx, .pptx, etc) for Office 2007 in windows platform. I hope it is much faster in a real mac machine. I rate 6.5 out of 10.