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Office vs. Office

Jeff Dickey 21st Jul 2009

I'll agree with the general thread that Office 2000 for Windows was
the overall best version of Office for Windows that has ever shipped.
More stable in my experience than either 97 or 2003, it was the last
version of Office for Windows that did not jump the featuritis shark.

I have, for about a year now, made regular use of Office 2008 for Mac
- which, as the first version of Office for Mac that I have used in
nearly 20 years, continues to be a revelation. My understanding is that
there is zero code overlap between Office:Win and Office:Mac,
and I can easily believe that. However, that also throws a bit of a
spanner into Microsoft's longstanding claim that 'nobody can make a
system that will 100% faithfully render and save our document
formats"; MacBU is doing it.

I have iWork '09, which I use mostly for Keynote (which is to
PowerPoint as Beethoven's Eroica is to Chopsticks). I also
have OpenOffice 3.1, since I support several Linux shops that use it.
But Word is still the word-processing software I fire up 80% of the
time - a complete reversal from when I 'lived' in Windows.