Office 2004 Professional for Mac- Some Impressions
I had been waiting until Microsoft released their first “bug fix” before trying Office 2004. Service Pack 1 for the software arrived several weeks ago, and reports started hitting the Internet street that some of the major problems I had been avoiding had been fixed. I also needed to get a copy of Virtual PC that would run Windows XP or 98 on my PowerBook. While hunting around, I stumbled on a good deal at Amazon.com. They were selling Office 2004 Professional for $279 before a $50 rebate! For those of you who don't know what Office Professional for the Mac is, it's a copy of Office 2004 bundled with Virtual PC 7.0 running Windows XP Professional. Office 2004 retails normally at $329 by itself, and Virtual PC 7.0 with Windows XP Professional retails for $249. With this deal, I could get both applications I was interested in for less than the price of one of them! Needless to say, I sprang for the purchase.
Office 2004
The jump between Office v.X for the Mac and Office 2004 is not a leap but a skip. User interface changes are not huge. The addition of the Project Center, which is accessible not only from the Project Gallery wizard but from the applications themselves, is the biggest major change.
In Word, the thing I noticed right away was the red toolbox sitting on the Standard menu. Click on that toolbox and the Project Center window flows onto the screen. The window has a toolbar near its top sporting a Scrapbook, Reference Tools (the icon is a picture of several books standing together), the Compatibility Report (the icon is a wrench), and the Projects briefcase. The Scrapbook is a place where you can store all kinds of items you may need to assemble together a project (putting all your graphics on one place). The Reference Tools window contains the dictionary, thesaurus, a button to “Search Encarta Encyclopedia” and one to “Search MSN”. The Compatibility Report section lets you run your document through a check to see how compatible it is with other Windows and Mac versions of Word. And I don't have any current projects so clicking on the Projects briefcase does nothing. As soon as I have a project and can see that little icon in action, I'll let you know.
In general, other changes in Word are minor. Like some of the recent versions of Windows Word, this version gives you the option to automatically undo an action by clicking on an icon that appears next to the word acted upon. The extra automation is also one reason why this version of Word is slower than the last, though not significantly so. The speed loss is minor but it is noticeable if you spend a lot of time in the application.
PowerPoint is also changed little. The biggest addition to the application is the addition of Presenter Tools; but since I haven't used them yet, I'll reserve comment. The biggest thing I had to get used to was the changed Formatting Palette. At its top is now an “Add Objects” section that lets you add AutoText, Tables, Symbols, AutoShapes, Lines, and Text Shapes, including text boxes. Graphics can also now be inserted using tools in this section. Many of these functions were previously accessed through a floating toolbar, and their movement and use within the Formatting Palette were not intuitive. The Formatting Palette is now also almost totally transparent when not the active window, which can be good or bad, depending on how hard you have to look for it. Otherwise, the rest of the Office v.X functions are still there and it doesn't take any guessing or retraining to use them.
The biggest thing I've noticed about Excel was the subtle change to the worksheet view. The application boots with a lower magnification view and dotted lines now show you where the page edges are if you immediately print the worksheet. I haven't really used this feature enough to have an impression of it one way or the other. Stay tuned. Most other interfaces appear to be the same.
Entourage is where the Project Center is now located. It has its own little button next to Mail, Address Book, Calendar, Notes, and Tasks. I haven't yet seen any significant differences in most of those applications. What has caught my attention has been Mail's Junk mail filters. They are on by default and do a really good job of intercepting spam. Lots of people seemed to also be enraptured with Entourage's natural filing of messages into groups sorted by when they were received. That's not a feature I like. I've turned it off. While this version of Entourage also has expanded Exchange Server functions, I was not able to get it to work well enough with my Exchange Server at work to adopt it. I still use Outlook 2001 (in Classic Mode) to connect to my work e-mail using VPN. The only other thing about Entourage I'm going to mention is that, as a security feature, HTML messages that arrive with photos arrive without pictures, which Entourage has stored on your e-mail server. It does give you a link telling you to click on it to download the pictures and see the message as intended. I'm not sure exactly what evil it's trying to protect me from, in true Gatesonian fashion.
Virtual PC 7.0 (for Mac) with Windows XP Professional
Since I own a Windows XP/98SE powered PC, I never thought I'd ever need Virtual Pc for anything. That changed when my wife and I decided to buy an airplane and the Aircraft Owner's and Pilot's Association released a Windows-driven “Real-Time Flight Planner”. It is an awesome tool to use for flight planning, but there is no Mac version. The AOPA site shows Mac is supported, but when you read the fine print, it is through running the application using Virtual PC and Windows XP. While I could easily run the application on my XP PC when I was at home, what was I going to do when I was on the road? My laptop is a 1GH G4 PowerBook. My choice seemed to be to buy a Windows powered laptop (something I might still have to do) or try running a Virtual PC/Windows XP combo. The 12 inch Windows laptop I wanted (by Averatec) could not be had for much under $1000, so I decided to give Virtual PC a shot to see if I could save some money!
Installing the application took about 15 - 20 minutes on my PowerBook, which at the time was running with 512MB of memory. The installation went without a hitch, and actual inputs to get the new OS configured were, well, no more than it takes to normally set up Windows. The application installed a little Start menu icon on my Dock; by clicking on it, I can access the Windows XP Start Menu just as if Windows XP was running.
The boot up process is not exactly quick. It takes a little over a minute for XP to boot to the point where it asks for a password, and another forty seconds after that to get the desktop loaded and the rest of the operating system booted. (This is on a 1GHz G4 PowerBook with 1.24 GB of PC2700 DDR RAM.) System response with this setup is adequate, roughly equivalent to running XP with a 1 GHz Pentium 3 and 256 MB RAM. It is adequate for my purposes, though screen redraws and other system responses do require some patience. Networking over the PowerBook's internal Airport Extreme connection has been flawless, as has been networking using the PowerBook's internal modem.
Interestingly, I evaluated system response with both 512MB and 1.24 GB of RAM in the PowerBook. While I wasn't trying to run any heavy duty Windows apps, I could see no perceptible difference in how the system ran. This may be because the allocated memory didn't change (512MB for both cases).
So far, I've been happy with how Virtual PC has performed. It's an okay way to run average Windows applications, though almost any kind of 3d game would be out of the question. Certainly, for what I paid for it and Office 2004, I made a great buy.
Office 2004
The jump between Office v.X for the Mac and Office 2004 is not a leap but a skip. User interface changes are not huge. The addition of the Project Center, which is accessible not only from the Project Gallery wizard but from the applications themselves, is the biggest major change.
In Word, the thing I noticed right away was the red toolbox sitting on the Standard menu. Click on that toolbox and the Project Center window flows onto the screen. The window has a toolbar near its top sporting a Scrapbook, Reference Tools (the icon is a picture of several books standing together), the Compatibility Report (the icon is a wrench), and the Projects briefcase. The Scrapbook is a place where you can store all kinds of items you may need to assemble together a project (putting all your graphics on one place). The Reference Tools window contains the dictionary, thesaurus, a button to “Search Encarta Encyclopedia” and one to “Search MSN”. The Compatibility Report section lets you run your document through a check to see how compatible it is with other Windows and Mac versions of Word. And I don't have any current projects so clicking on the Projects briefcase does nothing. As soon as I have a project and can see that little icon in action, I'll let you know.
In general, other changes in Word are minor. Like some of the recent versions of Windows Word, this version gives you the option to automatically undo an action by clicking on an icon that appears next to the word acted upon. The extra automation is also one reason why this version of Word is slower than the last, though not significantly so. The speed loss is minor but it is noticeable if you spend a lot of time in the application.
PowerPoint is also changed little. The biggest addition to the application is the addition of Presenter Tools; but since I haven't used them yet, I'll reserve comment. The biggest thing I had to get used to was the changed Formatting Palette. At its top is now an “Add Objects” section that lets you add AutoText, Tables, Symbols, AutoShapes, Lines, and Text Shapes, including text boxes. Graphics can also now be inserted using tools in this section. Many of these functions were previously accessed through a floating toolbar, and their movement and use within the Formatting Palette were not intuitive. The Formatting Palette is now also almost totally transparent when not the active window, which can be good or bad, depending on how hard you have to look for it. Otherwise, the rest of the Office v.X functions are still there and it doesn't take any guessing or retraining to use them.
The biggest thing I've noticed about Excel was the subtle change to the worksheet view. The application boots with a lower magnification view and dotted lines now show you where the page edges are if you immediately print the worksheet. I haven't really used this feature enough to have an impression of it one way or the other. Stay tuned. Most other interfaces appear to be the same.
Entourage is where the Project Center is now located. It has its own little button next to Mail, Address Book, Calendar, Notes, and Tasks. I haven't yet seen any significant differences in most of those applications. What has caught my attention has been Mail's Junk mail filters. They are on by default and do a really good job of intercepting spam. Lots of people seemed to also be enraptured with Entourage's natural filing of messages into groups sorted by when they were received. That's not a feature I like. I've turned it off. While this version of Entourage also has expanded Exchange Server functions, I was not able to get it to work well enough with my Exchange Server at work to adopt it. I still use Outlook 2001 (in Classic Mode) to connect to my work e-mail using VPN. The only other thing about Entourage I'm going to mention is that, as a security feature, HTML messages that arrive with photos arrive without pictures, which Entourage has stored on your e-mail server. It does give you a link telling you to click on it to download the pictures and see the message as intended. I'm not sure exactly what evil it's trying to protect me from, in true Gatesonian fashion.
Virtual PC 7.0 (for Mac) with Windows XP Professional
Since I own a Windows XP/98SE powered PC, I never thought I'd ever need Virtual Pc for anything. That changed when my wife and I decided to buy an airplane and the Aircraft Owner's and Pilot's Association released a Windows-driven “Real-Time Flight Planner”. It is an awesome tool to use for flight planning, but there is no Mac version. The AOPA site shows Mac is supported, but when you read the fine print, it is through running the application using Virtual PC and Windows XP. While I could easily run the application on my XP PC when I was at home, what was I going to do when I was on the road? My laptop is a 1GH G4 PowerBook. My choice seemed to be to buy a Windows powered laptop (something I might still have to do) or try running a Virtual PC/Windows XP combo. The 12 inch Windows laptop I wanted (by Averatec) could not be had for much under $1000, so I decided to give Virtual PC a shot to see if I could save some money!
Installing the application took about 15 - 20 minutes on my PowerBook, which at the time was running with 512MB of memory. The installation went without a hitch, and actual inputs to get the new OS configured were, well, no more than it takes to normally set up Windows. The application installed a little Start menu icon on my Dock; by clicking on it, I can access the Windows XP Start Menu just as if Windows XP was running.
The boot up process is not exactly quick. It takes a little over a minute for XP to boot to the point where it asks for a password, and another forty seconds after that to get the desktop loaded and the rest of the operating system booted. (This is on a 1GHz G4 PowerBook with 1.24 GB of PC2700 DDR RAM.) System response with this setup is adequate, roughly equivalent to running XP with a 1 GHz Pentium 3 and 256 MB RAM. It is adequate for my purposes, though screen redraws and other system responses do require some patience. Networking over the PowerBook's internal Airport Extreme connection has been flawless, as has been networking using the PowerBook's internal modem.
Interestingly, I evaluated system response with both 512MB and 1.24 GB of RAM in the PowerBook. While I wasn't trying to run any heavy duty Windows apps, I could see no perceptible difference in how the system ran. This may be because the allocated memory didn't change (512MB for both cases).
So far, I've been happy with how Virtual PC has performed. It's an okay way to run average Windows applications, though almost any kind of 3d game would be out of the question. Certainly, for what I paid for it and Office 2004, I made a great buy.
posted by Andy Foster at
2:55 PM
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