A review by Russ Aaronson

Office v.X Review - Part 2

III. It’s relatively unchanged!  It lets you type stuff! It’s Word v.X!

When it comes to word processing, it’s the little things that count.  It’s far more important to do the basic stuff well than to add new stuff.  Unfortunately, Word heretofore lacked two essential functions: the ability to select multiple strands of text, and the ability to clear all formatting.

With this upgrade, Word has finally become a full-featured word processor.  Command-clicking lets you select as many text selections as you like, and you can clear formatting from any selections by choosing Clear>Formatting from the Edit menu.  These features aren’t going to prompt any great epiphanies in your life, but it will make things easier for most users on a daily basis.

Add in smoother layouts and anti-aliased text appearance (both courtesy of Quartz), and you basically have Word v.X in a nutshell.  I won’t waste any more of your time here talking about the minor “enhancements” in Word, but I can say that “little” improvements like the Formatting Palette, the Aqua interface, and the smooth type have made Word a much better program.

IV. Getting to the point with the new(ish) PowerPoint

Most of the other reviews of PowerPoint v.X have focused on transparent graphs, so let’s get this out of the way.

Mmmmm ... transparent graphs ... mmmmm

See how the graphs look so clean?  See how the graphs are transparent so you can actually view every level?  Very nice indeed, and if you add in PowerPoint packages (the ability to couple your presentation with all of its associated graphics and data files for easy transportation), you have what most folks have talked about in this Office component.

But there is more under the hood.  When it comes to PowerPoint, the most important improvement we need is originality.  Anyone who has endured a PowerPoint presentation brimming with Microsoft’s stock themes, designs, transitions, and clip-art knows that it takes plenty of effort to make a distinctive, attractive presentation with this software.  We need more tools for individualizing presentations if the world is to be saved from bland staff meetings.  If this new version is any indication, Microsoft is starting to come around on this subject.  You’ll find plenty of new presentation designs and clip art on the install CD, but I think the QuickTime transitions are even more exciting.  Using Apple’s QuickTime technology, slide transitions can be made as subtle or as spectacular as your tasks and tastes demand.  Here are some snapshots of QuickTime transitions.

You just couldn’t do this stuff in OS9; though there is a downside.  If you have maxed out your RAM, these transitions will get choppy.  Nevertheless, it’s nice to know that more options are here, and that we Mac users have this stuff all to ourselves right now.

Things like these transitions are a beginning, but Microsoft could still improve things dramatically by addressing the creativity lull that exists between the novice use level (characterized by excitement with PowerPoint’s potential) and the expert use level (which involves the inclusion of homebrewed QuickTime transitions and sophisticated Filemaker database links).  It takes plenty of PowerPoint instruction to move out of this intermediate “so that’s all it does?” phase, and most of us lack the considerable time it will take to yield a marginally improved presentation.  Now that Office is carbonized, Microsoft has the opportunity to make PowerPoint presentations interesting again.

V. How to Excel in business without really changing.

I’m not going to lie to you: my experience with Excel is, shall we say, limited.  Lucky for me, Excel has earned the lion’s share of attention in other Office reviews, so I’ll give you the Cliffs Notes version and add a few other observations.

You have all of the transparent chart fun discussed earlier, plus a List Manager to, predictably, manage lists (though the best feature here is the ability to keep list headings on screen as you scroll through a document).  There’s also plenty of automatic actions to make life easier, like Auto Recovery (why it took so long to get this is beyond me), List Auto Complete (which provides a drop down contextual menu of previously used information) and List AutoFill (another item that’s fairly self-explanatory).

Filemaker users should take a look out the window, because the pigs are just flying all around out there now that Excel has actually made it easy to link up with their databases.  This also marks a turning point for Microsoft, who must be bristling at an installed user base they can’t simply knock over with by porting Access (the database component of Office Pro installations on Windows).  The school system I work for is almost entirely dependent on Filemaker, and the tech folks I’ve spoken with are impressed enough with this import Wizard to take a closer look at OS X implementation districtwide.

Again, no heart-stopping changes really show up here, but anything that makes the Mac appetizing in business and education is terribly important to the platform.

It’s enough to make a Microsoft-hater paranoid.

VI. Entourage: Is that French for mediocre?

You got e-mail into my datebook program.

You got a datebook into my email program!

Hey, they taste great together!

I’m dating myself with this reference to a classic peanut butter cup commercial, but an informal survey revealed that many people have never heard of Entourage.  By rolling an e-mail application and a personal information manager into one unit, Entourage presents you with the opportunity to make your Mac a virtual secretary.

The dream far supersedes reality.  The email portion of the application beats Apple’s spartan Mail app hands down, but I still find Microsoft’s application to be awkward in both layout and performance.  Modifying account settings causes a series of annoying pop-up windows, and performing actions on multiple messages always feels clumsy.  Working with the mail component of Entourage left me feeling as though I had gone back to Classic, and that’s the most disappointing aspect of this otherwise Aqua-savvy suite of programs.

The PIM, on the other had, is much improved from its previous incarnation, and it feels quite comfortably at home in OS X.  Daily activities are denoted in attractively drawn bars on the main calendar, and most of the expected calendar views are represented.  Microsoft still needs to find a more elegant way to combine calendar, task, and note views into one customizable pane, and the implementation of OS X sheets (those transparent dialog boxes that slide out of window bars) could go a long way toward making this dream a reality.

I’ll readily admit that I haven’t had time to really give Entourage a chance at doing what it supposedly does best —combining email, scheduling and contacts into a seamless whole.  Until then, it’s hard to make a convincing argument for Entourage as a “must-have” Office application — especially when we have Palm Desktop and Mail.app available free of charge.  If you actually use one of those crazy Palm devices, you’ll also find yourself waiting for Microsoft to furnish an Entourage-friendly conduit.

All in all, Entourage is an improvement over the last version, but it lacks the OS X polish that Microsoft has achieved throughout the rest of the suite.

VII. Conclusions

If you’ve actually read this far in the obligatory Office review, I have a surprise for you ...

Do you remember this little guy?  If you said “Hey, that’s the PowerPoint transition terrier,” you’re absolutely right.  Sadly, he didn’t make the cut in Office v.X, but he can at least find dignity here in my humble review.  Why not go straight to my article forum and give him a name?

Should you purchase Office v.X.? If you already own an earlier version of Office (no really, I mean you actually purchased and registered it), and you’re using OS X, the upgrade price is more than worth the price of admission.  If not, the price is too steep for anyone but professionals or consumers with plenty of extra dough.  And if the quality of Office:mac v.X is the question you need answered before moving over to OS X, then it’s definitely time to make the move.

Russ Aaronson
English Teacher,
Pompano Beach, FL

Product: Office X

Company: Microsoft

Price: $499 .... Upgrade price: $299 (Oh, ... and your first born son)

Rating: (5 possible)