Looking for Mac Office 2011 at best price?

FloFlo

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Does any of your immediate family work for a very large corporation or government body? If they do then there is the Home User Program which allows you to get it simply for an administration fee (was around £12 last time I saw).

The caveat is that you "must" delete it if you ever leave the employment of that organisation but I have known those that have "forgotten" to do so and it continues to function and update as normal.

I work for the LEA but no one at school has ever mentioned this. Trying to remember my work email to check but their IT system is rubbish and I just usually use my own email for work.

prowla

An alternative would be to get Fusion,and XP and run the Winows version.
That would give 100% compatibility.

Mr_Toad

prowla wrote: »

An alternative would be to get Fusion,and XP and run the Winows version.
That would give 100% compatibility.

There's no issue at all with compatibility.

prowla

masonn wrote: »

There's no issue at all with compatibility.

Compatibility of user interface too...

Also, how's about if you need Access or other products in the Office family? The OP mentions Publisher.

Mr_Toad

Well Access and Publisher don't come with Basic Office on the PC either they only come with the Pro version which is a lot more money so that's a bit like comparing oranges and lemons.

As for Publisher pretty much all of the Publisher functionality is built in to Word 2011 for Mac. Of course the resultant publications with be docx not pub files. It's a compromise and MS don't do themselves any favours by not advertising the fact. Perhaps they are wary of annoying their much larger PC user base who have to pay for Publisher functionality in a separate product. Who knows.

If a Mac user needs a database there are plenty out there from the free one in Libre office to Bento 4 designed specifically to fully integrate with the Mac OS and software. Having used Bento I'm not surprised MS didn't do a Mac version of Access, it would need a lot of development to give it the sort of integration that Bento has and Bento is only £35

Let's not be pedantic, for most users Office means Word & Excel and for those who use it at work Outlook because they're familiar with it.

As for the interface, it's not that different. In fact I think MS have done a great job on the Mac they haven't just copied the PC interface. They've designed it so that if you are a Mac user the Office for Mac interface is laid out in a similar and familiar way to other Mac software. All credit to them for that.

Your suggestion about Fusion VM is a good one, the best of both worlds. I use VirtualBox, it was a SUN product but they are now owned by Oracle but unlike Fusion it's free.

That said since my recent OS upgrade to Mountain Lion I notice VirtualBox isn't working, I'm hoping it just requires an update but I haven't had time to have a look yet.

Have a look at the Microsoft Home Use Program site to see if you qualify.

http://www.microsofthup.com/hupuk/faq.aspx?culture=en-GB&resID=UCTKTAoHAtQAABbwzsoAAAA@

prowla

masonn wrote: »

Well Access and Publisher don't come with Basic Office on the PC either they only come with the Pro version which is a lot more money so that's a bit like comparing oranges and lemons.

As for Publisher pretty much all of the Publisher functionality is built in to Word 2011 for Mac. Of course the resultant publications with be docx not pub files. It's a compromise and MS don't do themselves any favours by not advertising the fact. Perhaps they are wary of annoying their much larger PC user base who have to pay for Publisher functionality in a separate product. Who knows.

If a Mac user needs a database there are plenty out there from the free one in Libre office to Bento 4 designed specifically to fully integrate with the Mac OS and software. Having used Bento I'm not surprised MS didn't do a Mac version of Access, it would need a lot of development to give it the sort of integration that Bento has and Bento is only £35

Let's not be pedantic, for most users Office means Word & Excel and for those who use it at work Outlook because they're familiar with it.

As for the interface, it's not that different. In fact I think MS have done a great job on the Mac they haven't just copied the PC interface. They've designed it so that if you are a Mac user the Office for Mac interface is laid out in a similar and familiar way to other Mac software. All credit to them for that.

Your suggestion about Fusion VM is a good one, the best of both worlds. I use VirtualBox, it was a SUN product but they are now owned by Oracle but unlike Fusion it's free.

That said since my recent OS upgrade to Mountain Lion I notice VirtualBox isn't working, I'm hoping it just requires an update but I haven't had time to have a look yet.

Have a look at the Microsoft Home Use Program site to see if you qualify.

http://www.microsofthup.com/hupuk/faq.aspx?culture=en-GB&resID=UCTKTAoHAtQAABbwzsoAAAA@

Sure, I was being pedantic about what "compatible" really means.

And yes I know that some of the items are in Office Pro as opposed to the base product. But the OP's Publisher thing goes back to the compatibility question - sure you can get equivalence and import/export of "most" features, but that's not great if you are regularly sharing files. I remember some time back working with somebody who had decided to go for OpenOffice, and they spent more time tweaking layout than actually doing useful work. Even Outlook may be important if the company activities revolve around Outlook features, maybe scheduling, workflow, etc.

I agree that MS have done well to stick to the Mac user interface guidelines (actually, they released a GUI version of Word on the Mac before the PC even had a windowed environment - I think I've still got the discs somewhere!).

I run VMs on my Windows PC, which gives me segregated environments for different things; for instance I have a VM with Windows 7 & Office for work administration and emails, and another with Linux for systems administration activities to a customer over a secured VPN.

Mr_Toad

I got VirtualBox sorted, all it needed was a quick update.

I can now get at my Linux VMs my Oracle Database Dev VM and my Windows 7 VM which I hadn't booted for so long that there are about a gazillion TB of Windows updates waiting :0(

I've been trying to wean myself off Outlook at home. Apple Mail is perfectly capable and I use the Mac addressbook and iCal too. All Outlook does is duplicate the info!

Just because of my familiarity with Office I've let that steer me away from a fully integrated set of excellent Apple software. I really should make better use of what I have :0)

FloFlo

masonn wrote: »

I got VirtualBox sorted, all it needed was a quick update.

I can now get at my Linux VMs my Oracle Database Dev VM and my Windows 7 VM which I hadn't booted for so long that there are about a gazillion TB of Windows updates waiting :0(

I've been trying to wean myself off Outlook at home. Apple Mail is perfectly capable and I use the Mac addressbook and iCal too. All Outlook does is duplicate the info!

Just because of my familiarity with Office I've let that steer me away from a fully integrated set of excellent Apple software. I really should make better use of what I have :0)

I think that's what I need to do, am finding the apple software a lot quicker and very user friendly just need to forget about windows and get used to it.

Erme

masonn wrote: »

I got VirtualBox sorted, all it needed was a quick update.

I can now get at my Linux VMs my Oracle Database Dev VM and my Windows 7 VM which I hadn't booted for so long that there are about a gazillion TB of Windows updates waiting :0(

I've been trying to wean myself off Outlook at home. Apple Mail is perfectly capable and I use the Mac addressbook and iCal too. All Outlook does is duplicate the info!

Just because of my familiarity with Office I've let that steer me away from a fully integrated set of excellent Apple software. I really should make better use of what I have :0)

Yeah all the windows emulators for Mac Don't work (I think I've tried all the free ones and WinOSX cos it was only £3)....get virtual box and use a youtube video for help to install it. Should be up and running in no time. I got it for flashing my android phone with xp and I wish I'd got it sooner!!! Argh!!!.....

You'll be fine. VB just gets easier and easier to use. I have ubuntu (that I never use) and windows xp on mine and now I've got the USB sorted it's fine.



E

WilliamO

Why don't you download the 90 Day trial of Office 2011 and load your work/templates into it to see what you like about office 2011 and what you don't?

I did that and found that converting a file to PDF for example did not come out right - My docx file of text and shapes looked the same in office 2011 as my original windows office 2010 version, but when I went to convert it to pdf in office 2011 I found my margin areas (i.e. 3mm margins) had turned white!! when they should of been covered with my background image covering the whole page. I thought it was Adobe so I downloaded a PDF print driver but still had the same problem. It was only when I changed the margins to 0 in office 2011 and resaved as PDF that the pdf file showed the margins with the background image - This meant I had to move all my shapes and text 3mm back to their original place in order to keep my background image on the edge of the paper.

In my experience you will always get slight problems/incompatibilities when converting. Hence, I also tried libre office for mac. This did not stop me from buying office 2011 at pcworld though (3 macs/licenses - family version - £79.99).

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/microsoft-office-for-mac-home-and-student-2011-3-users-08258761-pdt.html

WilliamO