Has anyone tried to run Word 2004 on an Apple with an Intel CPU?

[Gary Goldberg]

Now that I have a Mac Mini Intel box I went to the Microsoft Mac website where
they note that their product development cycle is "2-3 years" and they make
no promise of when a universal version of Word will come out.

Since I have Word 98 I can't run it on my Mac Mini (without trying one of
the emulators like Sheepshaver). Has anyone run Word 2004 on an Apple
with an Intel CPU? I'd be interested in knowing your experience before
I spring for the Word 2004 update.

 

[Mike Lieberman]

I have just swapped from Windows XP to new Intell Mac and am working
with Office for Mac.

I have found that the word program is freezing when it appears infill
requestes have been imbedded after you run spell check.

Otherwise the program is running fine. If you have a simple document I
dont seem to have any other problems.

The Windows files have come across without incident

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi Gary:

Several people I know have tried it. It runs fine, and it's a little
quicker than on the current Macs (barely noticeable, but a little quicker).

Of course, if you are a real geek, you can get an actual copy of Windows to
run on your MacIntel

Narf collected the prize.

On 17/3/06 8:25 AM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Gary Goldberg"

I ran a rough comparison while visiting the London Apple Store the
other day. I created a huge Word 2004 document by repeated doubling via
cut and paste, then timed a Quad G5, an Intel iMac doing a global find
and replace. I then repeated the experment on my PB12" 1 GHz when I got
home. 250 pages 15,000 replacements

The Quad G5 was awesome, with its dual 30" screens and Quadro Graphics
and 8GB of memory. Word with eight full size A4 pages in view is
something.

The Intel iMac was a top of the line thing with forgotten quantity
memory. If I had to guess -- 1GB
My Powerbook has 768MB.

The quad did the replace in 2.5 seconds, The Intel iMac took about 15
seconds, my PB took 20.

The Intel iMac was wickedly quick in other operations, so I'd conclude
that Word was taking a major hit from the Rosetta emulation.

Using Word was quite OK on the Intel iMac, much faster interactively
than my Powerbook. But oh you Quad! Eight pages on screen! A page down
updates the lot, and if you blink, you miss it. Oh my aching credit
card.

I'd go for Word 2004 on the dual mini in your situation.

Word 2004 has a lot of good things, regardless of speed. Long filenames
and Unicode characters being the main ones for me.

 

[Kurt]

Hi Gary:

Several people I know have tried it. It runs fine, and it's a little
quicker than on the current Macs (barely noticeable, but a little quicker).

Microsoft has announced that the current (2004) version of Office will be
supported on the MacIntels, running in Rosetta.

Microsoft has announced that the next version of Office will be a universal
binary. That one should be more than four times faster than the current
version

Warning: Don't buy the Professional version if you are going to MacIntel.
It contains Virtual PC, which WON'T run on an Intel.

Virtual PC is heavily dependant on the underlying operating system: the
version of Virtual PC for Intel requires Windows XP as the host operating
system, it can't run on Unix which is the underlying MacIntel operating
system.

Of course, if you are a real geek, you can get an actual copy of Windows to
run on your MacIntel

Unless Apple or MS tries to stymie this solution, Virtual PC won't worth
the effort for MS to update.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Unless Apple or MS tries to stymie this solution, Virtual PC won't worth
the effort for MS to update.

Not so. If you're on a Mac running Windows OS, you can't also be running
Mac OS: it's either/or. But if you're using VPC to boot Windows, you can
run Mac apps simultaneously and easily switch back and forth between them.
And that's just *one* advantage.

Beth

 

[Gary Goldberg]

Hi Gary:

Several people I know have tried it. It runs fine, and it's a little
quicker than on the current Macs (barely noticeable, but a little quicker).

Of course, if you are a real geek, you can get an actual copy of Windows to
run on your MacIntel

Narf collected the prize.

On 17/3/06 8:25 AM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Gary Goldberg"

I ran a rough comparison while visiting the London Apple Store the
other day. I created a huge Word 2004 document by repeated doubling via
cut and paste, then timed a Quad G5, an Intel iMac doing a global find
and replace. I then repeated the experment on my PB12" 1 GHz when I got
home. 250 pages 15,000 replacements

The Quad G5 was awesome, with its dual 30" screens and Quadro Graphics
and 8GB of memory. Word with eight full size A4 pages in view is
something.

The Intel iMac was a top of the line thing with forgotten quantity
memory. If I had to guess -- 1GB
My Powerbook has 768MB.

The quad did the replace in 2.5 seconds, The Intel iMac took about 15
seconds, my PB took 20.

The Intel iMac was wickedly quick in other operations, so I'd conclude
that Word was taking a major hit from the Rosetta emulation.

Using Word was quite OK on the Intel iMac, much faster interactively
than my Powerbook. But oh you Quad! Eight pages on screen! A page down
updates the lot, and if you blink, you miss it. Oh my aching credit
card.

I'd go for Word 2004 on the dual mini in your situation.

Word 2004 has a lot of good things, regardless of speed. Long filenames
and Unicode characters being the main ones for me.

Thanks, and to John, Beth, Mike, and Kurt. Guess I'll go for the
upgrade!

Gary