Macintosh users have disliked Microsoft Word for a long time. Oddly enough, Word was one of the first full-powered word processors available for the Mac, way back in the early 1980s. But Microsoft had their own, non-Mac ways of doing things. So while the program was popular it was disliked. That didn’t stop Microsoft from producing Word for the Mac. Right now, I’m disgusted to say that Word 2008, the latest version of Word for the Mac, is truly a hard core disappointment.
Oh, where to begin . . . ?
The program is slow. Very slow. Painfully slow. Word takes an eon to start. It takes longer to start on my Mac than Photoshop, and Photoshop is notorious for being one of the bulkiest Mac programs. It’s not a very fast starter.
You stare at the Word splash screen for at least several minutes. It’s annoying to have to wait, especially when there are urgent thoughts rattling in your brain that must be typed vigorously at the keyboard lest they be lost in a mess of frantic thought!
When the splash screen goes away, you see what you think to be a blank Word document. Don’t be silly. It’s a mirage. The rest of the program has not yet come in to roost. You have to wait even longer for the toolbars to show up. Only then can you actually start typing.
Sensing that I might be exaggerating, or suffering from some sort of rift in the space-time continuum, I broke out my handy stop watch. From the time I double-clicked the Word icon on the dock to the time my hastily-typed text appeared on the screen took a full 32 seconds.
DOS was faster.
I won’t go into my other dislikes: The program has weird palettes instead of the standard toolbars. The palettes unpredictably change as you work in Word. Some documents sport a weird grid-like thing I cannot get rid of nor determine why it’s there. And, as expected, things have moved around. Thank the gods that Microsoft doesn’t design cars or we’d find the brake and accelerator pedals swapped every two years.
The program is file-compatible with Office 2007. Those weird DOCX files are used for the new Word 2008. Still, it can still read the older DOC files from both the PC and Mac.
Why did you upgrade if you hate it so?
Because, wise guy, I really didn’t like the old version of Word that I was using. It was Word X from 2002 or something. It would randomly crash on me. Word 2008 hasn’t crashed, but as long as I know that I have enough time to get a cup of coffee and pee after I start the Word, I’ll survive.
Same here: I haven’t had to use Office 2008, but I have testimonials from several friends who (unanimously) say it sucks. Big time.
If you’re looking for something else, I’d recommend iWork: it’s a fraction of the price of Office and runs absolutely fine on my (ancient) iMac DV, with no more latency than half a second. At worst. And it’s supposed to be able to read .docx files, although I haven’t had time to test this yet. (Incidentally, Pages documents have always looked suspiciously, in technical structure, like OOXML documents – although not hidden in a ZIP file.)
Comment by Jonathan Rothwell — March 12, 2008 @ 11:30 am
I have a friend who has a new iMac. She’s been using iWork for a while. I’m waiting for her verdict on the compatibility and such. So far, so good. I’ll have to play with it a while just to check it out. I have to use Word on the PC because the publisher uses it. But the Mac is mine, all mine!
Comment by admin — March 12, 2008 @ 11:41 am