Office for mac: 2004 or 2008?
Thread poster: Andrea Re
Andrea Re
Andrea Re  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:07
English to Italian
+ ...
May 14, 2009

Hi there,

today I have committed myself and purchased my super duper (I hope) iMac (20") which will be delivered in the next few days.
The first question is: what version of Office for Mac should I get? 2008 is getting a lot of awful press on Amazon, while 2004 seems to fare much better.
Also I will be needing the Italian spell checker, but I would hope it will be included in the box.
Any ideas?

Thanks,

Andrea

PS

... See more
Hi there,

today I have committed myself and purchased my super duper (I hope) iMac (20") which will be delivered in the next few days.
The first question is: what version of Office for Mac should I get? 2008 is getting a lot of awful press on Amazon, while 2004 seems to fare much better.
Also I will be needing the Italian spell checker, but I would hope it will be included in the box.
Any ideas?

Thanks,

Andrea

PS

One other issue will be: can I get to "change" the way the keyboard works? On my PC I can switch from Englis to Italian keyboard simply flicking a couple of keys, will I be able to do the same on the Mac? Thanks again.



[Modificato alle 2009-05-14 17:36 GMT]
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Dragomir Kovacevic
Dragomir Kovacevic  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 11:07
Italian to Serbian
+ ...
"2004 or 2008" May 14, 2009

Consider that Office 2004 for Mac, due to the rhytm in those years in MS house, is on the Ms office 2000 level for Windows, despite it is a very good product with continuous updates. I use it, for example, an italian version with spelling and grammar checkers for EN, as well. As for those, they are a bit sticky and wooden, and give sporadically different results.

Without entering in discussion do you or you do not use any CAT-s, or similar accessories. If you don't, then you can sai
... See more
Consider that Office 2004 for Mac, due to the rhytm in those years in MS house, is on the Ms office 2000 level for Windows, despite it is a very good product with continuous updates. I use it, for example, an italian version with spelling and grammar checkers for EN, as well. As for those, they are a bit sticky and wooden, and give sporadically different results.

Without entering in discussion do you or you do not use any CAT-s, or similar accessories. If you don't, then you can sail extremelly well with Apple Works (about 80 euros), and install, as well OpenOffice or Neooffice on Mac (opensource, with optional donations). But, most surelly, if money for you is not a problem, then make yourself another gift with Ms Office 2008 for Mac, that should be much more multicultural. I hope so, at least.

Take into account that Mac is not that multicultural, from the keyboard or language encoding point of view, as MSWin is is on PC.

salud, D

Andrea Re wrote:

Hi there,

today I have committed myself and purchased my super duper (I hope) iMac (20") which will be delivered in the next few days.
The first question is: what version of Office for Mac should I get? 2008 is getting a lot of awful press on Amazon, while 2004 seems to fare much better.
Also I will be needing the Italian spell checker, but I would hope it will be included in the box.
Any ideas?

Thanks,

Andrea

PS

One other issue will be: can I get to "change" the way the keyboard works? On my PC I can switch from Englis to Italian keyboard simply flicking a couple of keys, will I be able to do the same on the Mac? Thanks again.



[Modificato alle 2009-05-14 17:36 GMT]
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Roland Lelaj
Roland Lelaj
Canada
Local time: 06:07
Member (2008)
English to Albanian
+ ...
RE: International languages on Mac May 14, 2009

Hi there,

I think that to switch to your desired language on a Mac is even simplier than on a Pc.

Apple Menu -> System preferences -> International -> Choose your language

Here some links about this topic:
... See more
Hi there,

I think that to switch to your desired language on a Mac is even simplier than on a Pc.

Apple Menu -> System preferences -> International -> Choose your language

Here some links about this topic:

http://www.scl.utah.edu/computers/mac/help/languages.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlUKw8p_BzY

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-86645.html


Enjoy and "Think Differernt"



[Edited at 2009-05-14 20:22 GMT]
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Cetacea
Cetacea  Identity Verified
Switzerland
Local time: 11:07
English to German
+ ...
Go for the 2004 version May 14, 2009

Office for mac: 2004 is very good. When installing it on your Mac, simply choose which languages you will be using, and the dictionaries and spell checkers for those languages will be available to you. Italian is among them "in the box", as you put it.

As for switching between keyboards, you will be able to set that up in the System Setup under "country settings", which allows you to install a "keyboard menu" in the top bar of the Finder (on your desktop). All you have to do is clic
... See more
Office for mac: 2004 is very good. When installing it on your Mac, simply choose which languages you will be using, and the dictionaries and spell checkers for those languages will be available to you. Italian is among them "in the box", as you put it.

As for switching between keyboards, you will be able to set that up in the System Setup under "country settings", which allows you to install a "keyboard menu" in the top bar of the Finder (on your desktop). All you have to do is click on it to switch between keyboard languages.

(Please note that the actual names might be different, since I'm using the German versions of MacOS X and Office, but you'll find your way around. Macs are real easy to use.)
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Andrea Re
Andrea Re  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:07
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Wordfast May 14, 2009

dragomir_k wrote:

Consider that Office 2004 for Mac, due to the rhytm in those years in MS house, is on the Ms office 2000 level for Windows, despite it is a very good product with continuous updates.

hem... is that good or bad???

I use it, for example, an italian version with spelling and grammar checkers for EN, as well. As for those, they are a bit sticky and wooden, and give sporadically different results.

Without entering in discussion do you or you do not use any CAT-s, or similar accessories.

As I said in the title I use Wordfast (and cannot do without it. Anyway, I think that using word would give me less troubles in tyhe long run and would make sure I didn-t sent a file in the wrong format (although I know you can choose). At the end of the day I think it boils down to lazyness...


If you don't, then you can sail extremelly well with Apple Works (about 80 euros), and install, as well OpenOffice or Neooffice on Mac (opensource, with optional donations). But, most surelly, if money for you is not a problem,

Money not a probelm... what a joke::((

then make yourself another gift with Ms Office 2008 for Mac, that should be much more multicultural. I hope so, at least.

Take into account that Mac is not that multicultural, from the keyboard or language encoding point of view, as MSWin is is on PC.

salud, D


Thanks also to the others for the reassuring comments.
For now it seems that 2004 is winning... Let's see how the poll continues.

Cheers,

Andrea



[Modificato alle 2009-05-14 17:36 GMT] [/quote] [/quote]


 
Ioanna Orfanoudaki
Ioanna Orfanoudaki  Identity Verified
Belgium
Local time: 11:07
French to Greek
+ ...
switching keyboards not an issue - 2004 the only option with wordfast May 15, 2009

Hi Andrea,

I have been working on a Mac for a while now, and, though I still face a couple of minor issues every now and then, I have no regrets for "the big jump"!! I certainly feel I'm working in a safer environment, I've had close to none crashes (and when that happened, it was more due to memory, which I had to improve).
In many respects, Mac is better than a PC in terms of day-to-day use, for instance, you can flick through as many (predefined) keyboards as you like with
... See more
Hi Andrea,

I have been working on a Mac for a while now, and, though I still face a couple of minor issues every now and then, I have no regrets for "the big jump"!! I certainly feel I'm working in a safer environment, I've had close to none crashes (and when that happened, it was more due to memory, which I had to improve).
In many respects, Mac is better than a PC in terms of day-to-day use, for instance, you can flick through as many (predefined) keyboards as you like with the keys Alt+Command+Space, but you can switch back and forth between two keyboards only just with command+space.
On the other hand, I've often found myself having to switch to a different keyboard to apply a shortcut for a specific symbol or punctuation, because some of the shortcuts are not the same from one language keyboard to the other! So, for instance, though I may be typing in Greek, I need to switch to another keyboard to get square brackets, at least the opening one, as the provided shortcut doesn't work with the greek keyboard.. It's not a major issue, as switching keyboards is very quick and easy, but it's just one of the points that need to be improved...
In terms of Office and Wordfast, Office 2004 is the only way to go, as 2008 is not based on Visual basic, so they're incompatible. Now, Wordfast has developed their Pro version, which is not linked to any specific Office application and, I believe, seems like a work around any programming compatibility issues like the VB one. However, I understand there are still teething problems on which they're working.

Good luck
Ioanna
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Andrea Re
Andrea Re  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:07
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
THat settles it then... May 15, 2009

Ioanna Orfanoudaki wrote:

Hi Andrea,

I have been working on a Mac for a while now, and, though I still face a couple of minor issues every now and then, I have no regrets for "the big jump"!! I certainly feel I'm working in a safer environment, I've had close to none crashes (and when that happened, it was more due to memory, which I had to improve).

Good to hear. I dithered long and hard, but since I had to buy something (the PC I am using now has reached the retiring stage working on it is now virtually impossible), but I didn't really want Vista. At the shop they wouldn't commit themselves as to when Windows 7 and/or the free upgrade would be available, so I said, What the heck, and when for the big move...



In many respects, Mac is better than a PC in terms of day-to-day use, for instance, you can flick through as many (predefined) keyboards as you like with the keys Alt+Command+Space, but you can switch back and forth between two keyboards only just with command+space.

same thing applies to PCs. I use Alt-shift to toggle.

I am not sure what I will end up doing with my virtual dictionaries, though... we'll see....



In terms of Office and Wordfast, Office 2004 is the only way to go, as 2008 is not based on Visual basic, so they're incompatible.

There you go... problem solved then. It is even cheaper!!!

Now, Wordfast has developed their Pro version, which is not linked to any specific Office application and, I believe, seems like a work around any programming compatibility issues like the VB one. However, I understand there are still teething problems on which they're working.

Yes, I'll have to give it a try. One thing at a time, though.

Good luck
Ioanna


Thanks,

Andrea


 
Andrea Re
Andrea Re  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:07
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Ordered yesterday May 15, 2009

Arriver today.

Ooohhhh!!!! At least I managed to connect it to my router and internet works. As for the rest... oone step at a time:)


 
Andrea Re
Andrea Re  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:07
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
NeoOffice Jun 12, 2009

Hi there,

I have just downloaded NeoOffice and I have to say it looks quite pretty. The reason why I got is because I need to save some .doc files in .rtf format and I have been told by people in the know that it is something handled better by NO.
Now, the question is: would anyone recommend this program? Does it have features that work better than in Office 2004? (Dragomir_k??)

Thanks,

Andrea

[Modificato alle 2009-06-12 22:19 GMT]


 


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Office for mac: 2004 or 2008?






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