I havent tried it since the first release. Now I know multiple patches have been released, it is now good enough to use? I ask because it seems I will need to use it for now to write my dissertation.

It never was horrible.

QFT

Do you all realize I am talking about the Mac version, right?

The only "problem" with Office 2007 that I'm aware some people had issues with was the ribbon interface. Actually I was one of them - I could zip around Office 2003 really quickly and just 'know' were various commands were hidden. This new ribbon comes along and I knew nothing!

However after a week of actually using it, I love it. It's a lot quicker to navigate and the menus and options are structured more logically. You start from the left and work along as your document is being created. I've found it a lot quicker than having three or four clicks just to enable something or modify the formatting.

Give it a try (think you can download a free trial from MS) and see how you get on - but give it a week or so before you judge.

This is about Office 2008 for Mac. I still find it terribly slow and clunky, but i must live with it.

2008 = Mac Version
Read the title

Damn people! read the title!

It is still very slow for me.

Seems I have no other choice.

Just from what I've been reading at MacRumors (I've totally given up on Office 2008 myself), the performance issues that existed at launch still exist now, and updates can fail to complete successfully. The biggest problems, like the issue with Spaces, haven't been fixed either. I certainly haven't been convinced to try it again. I'm amazed Apple still keeps it on the front page of their online store. They should be trying to wean people off of Microsoft's products if this is what we can expect from them in the future.

It's not that horrible compared to Office 2004 for Mac, which corrupted its database on a weekly basis. At least 2008 opens without error messages.

I try to use iWork or Mellel whenever I can though.

I don't like Office on the Mac.

And these geniuses at MS already had 2007 ready and up for a year, and couldn't reproduce a similar design on the Mac... no, they had to change all the options once again to make you lost. Even MORE.

The Ribbon interface couldn't have been ported to the Mac, we all know why. But they could have done something 90% close to it, and place the features and options in the same Tabs, with the same aspect, etc. But no.

And where the stupid hell are mathematical expressions for God's sake? I'm in science and Word and PowerPoint are pretty much worthless without these. Don't tell me about MathType, it's just a wrong solution. Opening a whole new window with a whole new interface just to type an equation, without being able to type proper shortcuts on the keyboard... whose idea was that?

Oh yeah, it's slow to start, and pretty slow to use too!

By making MS 2008, MS wasted their time and their employee's time, and consumers are losing money by buying it and are losing their time also. They had the perfect interface, they didn't even have to design anything new

I should almost make an Angry Microsoft Nerd video just about Office 2008 on the Mac.

I love the GUI. But it's still slow as hell even with the latest patch from Microsoft.

I am personally considering to buy iWork 08

Pages > Word. Keynote > Powerpoint. Excel > Numbers.

Short answer: YES

iWork works a lot better.
Good thing i got Office 2008 for free (legally)

The Spaces issue is primarily why I gave up on 2008, as well as Excel. It looks nice, but in comparison to Office 2007, it's pretty terrible. iWork is a fair substitute (Numbers is a joke though), and the OOo 3.0 beta is pretty good, although both are lacking in Office 2007 compatibility.

2007 is great, but 2008 is such a disappointment. Apple either needs to get cracking a pro office suite or MS needs to go back to the drawing board.

---

On another note, when is iWork 09 out? I'm dying to see this and iLife 09 and the new improvements. Shouldn't there be an event for this? A 'One more thing' event with refreshed laptop designs and specs and iWork 09 and iLife 09 would be so freaking amazing! It could be the only real way they can apologize now that laptops have good reasons to be scheduled in October instead of September.

And yeah, a lot can be done to iWork, but globally it's a suite that works well.

I read the title & once again it was never horrible.

I've actually never had any issues with Office 2008 at all. And with the latest patches, this continues to be the case. There was a minor issue with Spaces, but it's fixed. I use Office 2008 every single day and I love it. I tried iWork and didn't care for it.

I wonder how many people here have actually used Office 2008 for more than a day. I think that some here are saying it sucks simply because hating Microsoft is the trendy thing to do these days.

It sucks because it's slow.

It takes ages to load on my iMac.

Word takes 57 seconds to load here, Pages takes 25 seconds. By load I mean "I can start typing now". Scrolling through fonts is slow, it has this irritating pseudo-ribbon that doesn't do much useful, it just doesn't integrate as well as Pages. However, I use Word because it saves in .DOC by default, and it isn't as design-obsessed as Pages is. Everyday use, though, I use TextEdit because of the speed.

Yes, what's wrong?

+1. I actually got mine for -$80 or so (sold Office 2004 just a few weeks ago).

iWork 08 is great and quick. I greatly enjoy the Office 2008 look and layout, but the thing is so very slow.

I have both and I prefer Office 08 for Mac. I'm more familiar with using Word then Pages, so that's the main reason I stick with Word. I haven't had any issues like crashing or anything like that. It does what I need it to do just fine.

I don't care about waiting 30 seconds for it too load.

Lol I was just wondering how it was possible...

Try using it on a laptop--simply unbearable. A word processor or spreadsheet application should not take an entire minute to load. The interface should not lag with the mouse.

No, I'm not trying to be trendy. The majority of mac users aren't being trendy when they say that Office 08 is a snail compared to iWork.

No, I fell in love with Office 2007 as soon as I tried it. It's actually pretty much the only big thing made by MS that I actually like, and I like it a lot, despite all the bugs.

They should have placed the options at the same places, removed the menus at the top (Just keep the Apple logo cuz they have no choice, and a Word menu, period) and make the interface "fit" with OS X. I would have used it every day, and uninstalled my Windows version. And I know I'm annoying with that, but it would have required math expressions as well implemented as in Windows/Office 07

BTW might wanna change the title (should be Is) .

I use Word every day on my MacBook and it loads very, very quickly. It doesn't take anywhere near a minute for me. Maybe at the most, around 5-10 seconds. And I use a wireless Mighty Mouse with my MacBook and it doesn't cause Word to lag.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't think I am. I really don't have any of the issues that are being described here. Maybe I'm just lucky.

And for the love of God people it's Office for Mac 2008- not Office 2007! You know who you are.

I'm on a base MacBook and I don't get any lag when using Microsoft Word. I have the latest of the updates too...

I have 1GB of RAM

I haven't used Microsoft Office on the Mac since Office v.X a few years ago. I prefer iWork because of how well it integrates with iLife '08 and Mac OS X, however I might try Office 2008 some day to see what it is like.

i'm using Office 2008 on a base MacBook (upgraded to 2GB of RAM) and I also don't experience any problems with slow loading times, takes around 15-20 seconds the first time (cold launch) I launch an Office application, any times after this it loads almost instantly.

Office 2008 took a while to load on my MacBook - even when I upped the RAM to 4GB.

But when I put it on my MacBook Pro, with still 2GB - it's a lot faster. So I think it's due to the system as well.

it takes me about 25 seconds to open word and actually be able to type. It has gotten better since its release, but it is still REALLY REALLY slow.

I finally installed it along with 600+ mbs of updates (the updates are already bigger than the original suite itself )

The cold launch took around 30 secs, subsequent launches are almost instantly, opening an existing SMALL document (tried with different ones and then several times with the same one) takes from 10 to 15 seconds, thats hardly impressive, but I have no other choice.

I uninstalled my retail purchased copy due to complete frustration! I recently updated to the latest release, went to open Word and I got an error about some file not being corrupted. Tried Excel, same thing. PowerPoint...yup same thing. I was so tired of it being slow anyway but that was the last straw for me.

I am back to 2004 in Fusion. It works.

Well, there is a small performance hit. I installed it on my old iBook, and I noticed it being dramatically slower than '04. I installed it on my desktop, and it's not so bad. Loads in like under 10 secs. This is on a 2.8ghz c2d, 2gb ram...

It probably loads as fast as '07 does on Windows Vista with the same specs.

To slow for me on my MacBook and iWork does what I want.

It loads a docx file in over 10 seconds in my macbook pro (2.2ghz C2D) while Office 2007 was almost instant on my old Pentium 4 3.2ghz

I haven't used it for a little while, but it just seemed to cause problems for me, weird problems completely unnecessary, uncalled for!

That sucks for you man.

"Benched" them, it was 5 seconds on Vista. 10 on OS X. 07/08 - same hardware.

I used iWork for whole of my final year project (more than 100 pages of writing), and it was great and pretty. Only thing is it wasn't export well in doc format, has the latest iWork improved this?

15 seconds here, opened for the first time after reboot, with project gallery on
5 seconds, opened for the 2nd time after reboot, with project gallery off

In Vista, office 2007 opens a lot faster... like, not even 5 seconds for the first time after reboot, and it never showed me this stupid project gallery.

Got the Home & Student edition for free when i purchased my MacBook (only for students at my uni)

Ahhh by buying a Mac, yeah that makes sense
It's probably the only thing I haven't thought about lol

Word takes under 20 seconds to load the first time for me. But if I launch it anytime after loading and quitting it once, it takes 5-7 seconds from clicking to being able to start typing. Not bad if you ask me.

Pages didn't do a great job when I tried opening my resume the first time, so my initial experience with it wasn't great.