Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Standard Review

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(More customer reviews)Wow. I said this one word when I started working with Microsoft's latest revision to their suite of software, Office 2004.
Wow. I also remember saying this when I say the gigantic headed Bill Gates up on the video screen behind Steve Jobs a few years ago when Apple and Microsoft agreed to play nice. (OK, there was more to it than just "play nice," but as usual, I digress.)
I do really like Office 2004. I like what I can do better with it. And, there is now also an envy factor. Not only do I have a better operating system at home than at work (my employer is still stuck in XP-land), but I now have a better Office software suite.
Allow me to tell you that I have been an Microsoft Office user for a few years, on both Windows and Mac OS 9. I was very happy with having Office X work so well on cross-platform work (when I travel without my Powerbook, I carry my USB thumb-drive and Office documents are quickly interchanged across operating systems.)
So, I have been very pleased with this latest version of Office. The 2004 suite installs very smoothly (I recommend following the install program, but you can drag-n-drop the entire suite also.)
I won't go into great detail about many of the different features (many Mac websites and magazines are filled with the current buzz about Office) but I will mention some high points and a few quirks.
I loved Project Center. This made Entourage a win for me. Prior to this, I had Office X, but I used Apple's Mail exclusively. Now, I use both (I'll mention this in one of my reviewed quirks below.) The ability to organize, track, and group all my electronic work together (emails, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, contacts, calendars ...) has been very useful. Plus I like the reorganized Entourage viewing panel for reading emails (the email opens and can be viewed to the right of the screen, rather than the traditional top and bottom view.)
Plus I really liked Word's updates in two key areas: Notebook layout and the formatting palette's transparency. The notebook layout helps me to take notes smoothly during presentations. Plus, it has a sound recording option. This was really neat. At a recent User Group meeting on databases, I sat and took notes during the presentation, and recorded the presenter's voice. During playback (90 minutes for about 8 megabytes), my notes are marked to the side by where in the presentation the recorded voice is currently. I'm almost willing to go back to college with this tool! But I can see where it will be useful in my current day to day work also. (I have a colander for a memory retention device, and I'm always taking notes in some form or another.)
Plus, I like the new feature of the formatting palette. When idle (maybe 10 seconds, if I counted), the palette allows the window below to show through, so that I can read my stuff a whole lot easier. Formatting for output is easier with this palette.
I use Excel, and I like it as a simple database. But I didn't see any really killer upgrades (but then I'm not a power user in the Excel world.) I do like how the charts and diagrams seem a whole lot easier now.
I've been a PowerPoint fan for quite a while now. But Apple's Keynote took away most of PowerPoint's thunder with its release. In 2004, PowerPoint fires back and wins back some issues on "Gee-whiz" tricks of animation and preview. The little addition of a timer makes the preview ability (the presentation on a separate screen/projector and the preview screen on your laptop) a key issue for the combination of making smooth and organized presentations. There are a whole new bunch of animation transitions and tricks. But, Keynote still wins in slide transition (the cube transform in PowerPoint falls flat.)
With this segue, I'll mention some of the downsides to Office 2004 which I experienced. In setting up Entourage, I brought over both an IMAP account (my .mac address) and a POP account (another email address). The IMAP works well enough, but I am used to "seeing" the email the Apple Mail way, and it took me a while to get used to seeing my .mac emails not move around as easily in filing (I'd have to copy the email somewhere, then delete it from the IMAP inbox. And my POP account (which worked so easily in Mail), never did get set up. I'm not smart enough to figure it out yet, so I still use Mail. And if Apple gives Mail a revision with at least an option to view emails from the side, rather then from above, I might switch back. All I know is that I like Entourage, but I don't really like it.
And, I encountered a series of application failures in PowerPoint when building a presentation for this review. Every one seemed somehow related to slide animations, but I couldn't see any one issue. For every one, I allowed the program to send its report to Microsoft with some hopes that this might get resolved.
And now, I'll finish by letting you know that Mom always said if I had nothing nice to say, that I ought not say anything at all. I have gotten in trouble with not listening to my Mom before. So with that, I offer my review of MSN Messenger: iChat Rules! But if you want full functionality of Entourage, load Messenger, but don't run it. With it installed, Entourage will let you preview emails when you are running other applications in the foreground (definitely useful feature.)
Lastly, as mentioned at the beginning, I use different Office versions, and I move documents around routinely to others. This Office version has one other neat trick -- a compatibility report. I can check my 2004 documents for compatibility with other versions to see what items might not work well. This is a nice simple feature, and I see this helping me out some also.

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Office 2004 Standard is designed to be a total office package, for Mac users who need compatibility with Windows. Start working with the latest versions of Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Word - with all-new Mac-only features, for a more productive office environment!Add sophistication to your Word documents Soft Drop ShadowsWord Smart Buttons allows users to decline the automatic corrections, bulleting and numberingNew Presenter Tools for Powerpoint - tools like the on-screen clock, notes pane and thumbnail viewer make changes and adjustments simpleEntourage 2004 offers improved junk e-mail protection, better Exchange support, advanced Three Columns and more -- get through your inbox faster than beforeCompatibility Reports determine compatibility between projects in Windows and Mac formatsStay in touch with MSN Messenger for Mac

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The Print Shop 2.0 Deluxe Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased this to replace version 23 thinking that it would be an improvement on some of the problem areas (such as the database function). Boy, was I mistaken. When I received the disk, it had scratches and could not be read in any of my computers. After polishing the disk I finally got it to read. After installing it I realized that none of the old projects will work with the new version. That was a bummer, just by itself, but the real problem with this new version is that it doesn't do half the things the older one did.
The first project I needed to use it for became a real challenge. I wanted to make address labels for set of cards I was sending out family about my parents move. First, there is no internal database feature at all in the new version. It used extracts from your email program in a format that my email doesn't support. After doing a lot of research, I was finally able to get around that problem and then found that the only way it will print labels is to print a full page of them. I thought I must be doing something wrong so I went to the help which is almost useless. Then I tried the Broderbund website support section which was no help because there are no tips generated for this product yet. I finally put in trouble request. This was something I was familiar with because I had already put in a trouble request concerning my unreadable disk. The email reply that comes as a result of this, tells you that you will receive a reply within 48 hours, but that if your question has already been asked and there is a tip on it they will not reply at all.
As I am writing this, about 2 weeks have passed since I submitted these trouble tickets. I have not received a reply to either one and there are no FAQs that answer them. My guess is that they are so inundated by trouble tickets on this product that they have decided to just ignore them all. Shame on you Broderbund. After being a loyal customer for years, I will not be purchasing any more Broderbund products until they decide to actually start providing support.
Some may ask why I just used email to contact them. The answer is simple, the only telephone number they offer for support is long distance (no toll free) and it is listed with a warning to expect hold times averaging 30 minutes or more. I really couldn't see dumping more money into the hole called The Print Shop 2.0 Deluxe.


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It's easier than ever before to create sophisticated print projects in minutes. Start with the brand new Wizard Design tool or choose from an enormous gallery of ready-made templates and contemporary images to design, print and share a wide variety of projects, including greeting cards, invitations, labels, signs and more. The Print Shop has been redesigned from the ground up, making it quicker and easier to use by combining intuitive design tools with contemporary content to give you the ultimate in creative freedom. Design personalized projects in minutes that are perfect for home, work and school.

The All New Way to Create Sophisticated Design
New Easy to Use Software Drag-and-drop photos, text and design elements with incredible ease and quickness.
Windows 7 & Windows Vista Compatible The Print Shop was designed to work on the latest PC operating systems
Wizard Design Tools Create and print over 100 custom projects, each in under 5 minutes.
Streamlined Workspace With a sleek new workspace, it's easy to find and switch between the various tools quickly.
Integrated Photo Editing One-click photo tools allow for common photo editing like cropping, red-eye removal and color correction.
New Templates & Clip Art Choose from an enormous gallery of contemporary ready-made templates and clip art images that are sure to complement any project
Color Match Find the right color for any project using the eye-dropper tool, or select from ten designer color palettes that are sure complement your work.
Advanced Design Tools Slider tools allow you to create custom gradients, transparency and drop shadows for a professional effect.
Easy to Share Print at home, email or publish your latest creation on the web to share with friends and family.
Advanced Page and Layout Tools
Layer Management Easily move art, text and objects between foreground and background. Show and hide layers for the ultimate in precision.
Columns & Text Wrap Flow text across columns to improve readability. Plus, you can easily flow text around graphic and other objects to create a professional finish.
Advanced Color Tools You now have three ways to pick the right color: the eye-dropper tool for precision color matching, professionally-designed color palettes and a color selector.
Drop Shadows & Dynamic Gradients Add a professional touch to any design with easy drop shadow tools. Dynamic gradients allow you to specify multiple gradient stops.
Image Management Edit photo tags and mark your favorites so that you can easily find the right photo for any project. Add your image to the Image Tray for easy drag and drop.
Impressive Headlines The Print Shop now offers the easiest solution for creating headlines with impact. Simply choose from an array of impressive options and customize to make it perfect.

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Norton Systemworks 3.0 Mac Review

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(More customer reviews)Symantec had tons of problems with Norton Utilities 8, which is part of Systemwroks 3. It isn't compatible with OS X 10.3 and has many problems with earlier systems. See Macfixit, Macintouch, or other news sources for evidence. Now Symantec announced that they are discontinuing development of everything but antivirus and network security products for the Mac. Don't buy broken software from a company who refuses to fix it. Buy DiskWarrior instead.

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Quicken 2005 Premier Review

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(More customer reviews)Per my usual procedure, I upgrade my copy of Quicken every other year. From what I can see, Quicken 2005 has hardly changed from Quicken 2003 (not necessarily a bad thing). Some things that I have noticed as being different are that:
- The program seems to load just a tad faster than before. On my 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 computer, my 19MB Quicken file changed from loading in about 2 seconds to loading in about 1 second. Insignificant, but noticable. On the esoterically theoretical downside, the Quicken 2005 upgrade process changed that same file from 16MB to that 19MB.
- The upgrade process suggested that I change my investing account so that the "checking" side of the account was reflected in one account instead of its existing two accounts. When I agreed, it processed the account and told me it didn't work right. Instead of reversing the change, it told me to restore a backup and leave the account as it was (unfortunately, it wasn't very specific about which account had problems or what they were). Not a big problem (since Quicken automatically made that backup when I started the upgrade). But, it could have been handled better.
- It appears that it's no longer possible to enter investment transactions directly in an account's register: you have to bring up a form dialog and enter the data there. If you enter such transactions only rarely, this isn't much of a problem. However, if you batch process a bunch of these, using that form gets tiresome pretty quickly.
- Unlike Quicken 2003 Deluxe, Quicken 2005 Premier allows you to set up scheduled transactions like dividends/interest in investment accounts. I'd have been happier if the program had noted dividend payments in the data downloads and automatically set up such quarterly scheduled payments. But, still, this is a good thing.
- With Quicken 2003, I was getting frequent error messages about my brokerage uploading data for accounts which didn't exist in Quicken. Those messages seem to have disappeared.
- When Quicken 2003 tried to download a quote for a stock which didn't exist in its data base, it popped up a warning screen and stopped the download until you accepted it. Quicken 2005 continues on without user intervention (a good thing, to me).
- The Quicken 2005 icon is UGLY and non-professional. I guess it's supposed to be a yellow dollar sign on a red-filled circle. Unfortunately, it looks like the "S" on Superman's outfit.
- Intuit seems to be practicing some type of "version-creep." From what I could decipher from the box and from Intuit's web site, I had to buy Quicken 2005 PREMIER to get the same investment capabilities I had in Quicken 2003 DELUXE. It's apparently a way of sneaking in a price increase. I don't mind the price increase so much as the fact that if I hadn't examined their table of capabilities, I would have automatically bought the DELUXE version and been unable to do the things I did with the old version. Irritating and potentially very bad from a customer-retention viewpoint.
- As others have noted here, Intuit is in the process of phasing out the use of QIF files. As I've never downloaded such things from my financial institutions, that doesn't affect me. The only worry I have is that this is yet another attempt by Intuit to lock people into their program (i.e., no data exchange). I haven't tried it yet, but there is an option to export REPORTS to Excel or to the clipboard (EDIT: I've now tried the Excel export and it's just the old export to a tab delimited file -- nothing new). If I could do that with an entire data file, that would be good. I'm not too sure about doing it with only what you can generate in a report, though. Also, as a work-around for importing QIF files to Quicken, I've seen messages that if you create a CASH account as a temporary working account, you can import your data there and then use Quicken's MOVE command to get the data in the proper account. Not elegant, but usable if you need it.
- I don't use the service, but from some articles I've read (do a Search on CNet), Intuit has changed the service it uses for online bill paying. It used to use CheckFree. With Quicken 2005, it uses Metavante. This, alone, doesn't seem to be much of a problem. But, the Quicken 2005 install process AUTOMATICALLY, and WITHOUT NOTIFICATION, changes your existing CheckFree account over to Metavante. Some people are rather upset about this (I would be too, if I used that service). There doesn't seem to be any way to opt out of, or reverse, that change.
All-in-all, I'm happy with the upgrade. It's not earth-shattering, so I don't recommend everyone run out and buy it. But, if you feel it's time to get a newer version of Quicken, there's nothing blatently wrong with this version and there are a few nice additions.

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Quicken 2005 Premier offers smarter categorization of your spending, better management ofyour categories and total control of your investments. Its exclusive tools help you invest,monitor your net worth and optimize your returnBack up and archive your Quicken files and export to an Excel spreadsheet more easily

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Quicken Premier 2007 Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been a Quicken user since 1994 and routinely upgraded every two years. This version leaves a lot to be desired. Intuit is so anxious to make every feature available from every page that the layout is cluttered with dialogue buttons and useless space. For everything else a user may do with Quicken, it is still basically a checkbook. In Quicken 2005 I could view 16 checkbook entries without scrolling, now I'm reduced to 11.
My account bar used to show 15 accounts, now it's down to 8. I have over thirty custom reports which now require multiple mouse operations to get through, not to mention the fact that they will all have to be re-customized and re-saved just to get rid of the graphs that Intuit gratuitously stuck in my work. Scheduled transactions? Prepare to scroll HORIZONTALLY through columns that few of us use. Want to import your 2005 Turbotax data? Get ready for an error message that says "Import failed, tax year not supported" If you use the home inventory feature you may see "not enough room on [x] drive" (Gee, you'd have thought 25 gigs was enough) Oh, and the tax planner acts like it's had a lobotomy. Darn that import bug!
I've never sent a Quciken product back in ten years but this one is out of here tomorrow. Too bad I can't return it to Amazon.....

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Quicken 2007 Premier

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PowerDesk Pro 6.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)What a fantastic program. I bought it as a replacement for Windows Explorer really, but it does so much more.
First off, as far as a file managing tool (replacement for Explorer) it is really nice. It defaults to opening two windows for viewing different folders, but that can be configured as you wish. When you start the program, it will show you the same folder views that you'd used previously. A great help if you regularly manage files from the same locations.
It also has built-in zipping, file-sync (backup)and FTP connectivity features. The toolbars across the top give you access to many features, no need of digging thru the pull-down menus. Clicking on the drive letters displayed at the top will scroll the window down to view that location.
You can turn on a window to view files as you select them. It will show the contents of many different file types, even AutoCAD drawings. That will save me a lot of time in searching for a particular file.
It's easy to use and powerful, that's a great combination.

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PowerDesk Pro 6 is a luxury edition of a file manager and offers more features and functionality than the limited file manager offered in Windows or other file management software.It completely replaces Windows Explorer, giving users a wide array of tools to search, edit, delete, move, sort, view and copy files, including those found on digital cameras or MP3 music players.

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Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm waiting for the day when software becomes more expensive than the actual hardware to run it (it should happen soon, considering the trend in computer prices these days, right??). In the meantime, I'm happy that Microsoft at least offers a lower-priced version of their software for those pursuing academic endeavors.
The Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 is basically identical to their standard Microsoft Office 2003. It contains:
- Excel 2003
- Outlook 2003
- Powerpoint 2003
- Word 2003
What it does NOT contain (compared with the professional and small business versions) is Access 2003, Publisher 2003 and the Outlook 2003 version that has a Business Contact Manager - none of which would be particularly necessary for students.
Microsoft stresses that this version of their Office 2003 is only for non-commercial use. You qualify for this edition so long as you are 1) a full- or part-time student enrolled in a K-12 institution, 2) home-schooled, 3) taking at least 6 credits at an accredited college/university, or 4) a full- or part-time faculty member and work 20+ hours at a school.
It retails at the amazon price, which seems like a lot until you remember that the Standard version is sold for over two hundred dollars more. There is no discounted upgrade price for the academic version, but this is still probably the best price you can get. AND you can use the software on up to three computers, so long as someone in your household qualifies (for instance, if you have a child who qualifies for this version, you can upload it onto your computer as well and use the software even if you do not qualify for the discount).
If you are a college/university student, I would suggest visiting your school bookstore before purchasing this software. Microsoft offers academic volume licensing through a lot of colleges/universities, where you can get the same software for up to 70% off if you qualify. Check out [microsoft website] for more information.

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Can be installed on up to three PCs with a household.

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