Microsoft Office 2008 is absolute crap
It is with great frustration that I find myself using Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. After years of putting up with the sluggish Office 2004, loyal users are rewarded with this piece of garbage. Though there are admittedly some improvements in the apps themselves, there is some inexcusable bugginess in the interface that is driving me nuts.
Microsoft Word is the biggest culprit so far. It generally misbehaves with Spaces. Windows will relocate to a new space for no good reason. Sometimes windows will not come to the foreground when clicked. This is not a general problem with Spaces, but is unique to Word as best I can tell.
Excel is giving me a rather unique problem at the moment. I have an external monitor hooked up to my MacBook. When I put an Excel window on the external monitor, it won’t let me drag it to the top of the screen. It only lets me drag it as far as the top of my internal screen, which is only about 2/3 of the way up the (larger) external display.
Microsoft tried to add new functionality by pop-up ribbons in both applications, but I have yet to find anything useful hidden in these interface monstrosities.
The educational version of Office also fails to connect to Microsoft’s own Exchange servers. Given the prevalence of Exchange use at academic institutions, this is mind-boggling.
The last complaint is admittedly not a bug, but rather a foolish feature restriction. The former issues are completely inexcusable and are likely completely due to Microsoft’s non-standard development practices. Add to this the fact that the apps are slow to launch, and I think there will rapidly be an emerging market for non-MS office apps.
February 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
NeoOffice and OpenOffice are equivalent pieces of crap, but you can’t beat the price ($0).
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve been trying to convince my group partners to use Latex instead of Word. They use Windows and I’m on a Mac. I’ve never heard anyone cry in defense of Office, whether it’s Windows or Mac.
I’ve had continuing issues with Formating, styles, Figure numbering, figure locations, the crap equation editor, columns, and everything else.
Latex is, of course, odd school, and (OMG) requires thinking. The WYSISYG documenting processing is ridiculous. I’ve never had a problem with Latex. Everything works.
Unfortunately, I don’t expect to see the emerging marktet for non-MS office apps. OpenOffice, NeoOffise, StarOffice, etc have been around for a very long time, but as with any “new” software experience, the learning curve can be quite steep and for people with little patience, the effort is much too great. Until someone comes up with a better concept for document or spreadsheet prep, the world will be stuck with MS. (Believe me, I don’t want to swallow that pill either.)
Insist on Latex.