Running microsoft office on my mac

bigfoot125

Microsoft OEM Windows XP Home Edition Inc. Service Pack 2 b- 1 Pack

i notice this operating system on amazon for £50,i am considering buying it so i can then put ms office on my macbook,2 queries,would it take all my hard drive space and secondly would it actually allow me to run word and excel on there in bootcamp

appreciate comments

weegie.geek

Surely the cost of MS Office for the mac is less than the cost of WinXP and Office for windows?

Unless of course you already own Office for windows. Check the licensing restrictions on that, if that's the case.

Openoffice isn't as good as MS Office, but it's free and will open MS Office files, so why not give that a shot before spending money?

Conor_3

XP won't take all your hard drive space. It'll take whatever you tell it is available after you've allocated it space in Bootcamp.

An alternative option would to be to install some VirtualMachine software such as VirtualBox (which is free) which would allow you to create a fake PC that runs within OSX and which you can install WinXP and Office to. As far as XP is concerned, it's being installed on a real computer. The advantage is that you can still stay within OSX and also run XP/Office either in a Window or fullscreen which would save you rebooting. When I was testing Linux, I ran it in a VM and when it was in fullscreen, you couldn't tell it wasn't a native install.

Bob63

Some options:

1) Bootcamp with XP and Office for Windows would work fine.

2) VMware or Parallels with XP and Office for Windows would also work.

3) Forget XP and just use Office 2008 for Mac - student version can be had for less than £100 and is legal to install on up to 3 Macs for students, school pupils and their parents.

4) Forget XP, forget MS Office and install NeoOffice, which is a Mac port of OpenOffice. Very soon you will also be able to get a native Mac version of OpenOffice, version 2.4 is currently available for test download and runs really well on the Mac without needing to install X11. This is the option I use and haven't had a single compatibility problem.

Mike

isofa

Just as several other people have responded above, I have to agree and say: why not just use the Mac version of MS Office? The brand new Office 2008 version has just been released. The previous version was Office 2004 (roughly equivalent to Office 2003 on the PC) The only thing it lacks in Access and Entourage is the Mac equivalent of Outlook, although it lacks some corporate facilities, but does includes a basic project manager which Outlook doesn't.

Prices should be found here from a good reseller: http://www.jigsaw24.com/default.aspx?I=COMP&SC=OFFI&WR=P&VC=&PL=OFSUI

No windows virtualisation needed

Else plenty of other options for open source software listed above too