Now that we have Exchange 2007 support in mail.app I have started to switch the rest of my users away from Entourage.

However, I think this is extremely sad since Office is a pretty decent product in regards to functionality and features.

I would like to stress though that clearing caches with Cache cleaner, repairing permissions and resetting the parameter ram often “works wonders” in “repairing” all kinds of issues.

Since I started doing this quite a few years back, each time I install new software, I have had a lot less issues with applications like Office and others. This is something I suspect a lot of people to ignore, hence getting into problems that could otherwise be avoided.

H.

I don’t think there can be enough posts on the internet for people to vent their frustrations about Entourage ;-)

I switched back to Mail.app a while ago. :)

Then came the problems with Entourage where people kept loosing their email databases. This took months to fix and again Microsoft tried to tell us there was nothing wrong.

Also sticking to a database storage for email seems to create a need for a lot storage space when backing up. Which again makes Entourage very questionable in my eyes.

Now with 2008 and OS 10.6.3 we are seeing acute commas over characters being displayed all over the place and this time there seems again no mention of problems from Microsoft.

However by removing the fonts that were installed by the 2008 installer seems to fix things.

In my opinion MS is a bit like a rotten politician. Deny, deny, deny and let the client pay for trying to figure things out.

Office 2008 is a very decent product but they need to get their act together in handling problems when they occur.

H.

I was a diehard entourage user.

Very cool tour of Microsoft’s Mac lab in Redmond.

150 Mac minis!

Sorry to hear you’ve had such terrible issues with Entourage. The current incarnation of Entourage is actually built on the foundations of the old Claris Email Macintosh application from what I understand.

In that I don’t rely on Office that much, I can not claim the level of unhappiness with it that you have experienced. My wife certainly is more disgrunted about it after spending six years using it for scientific papers and her PhD thesis.

Overall I’ve found the Office suite for Mac to be a pretty decent application, but there are not a lot of alternatives. Having lived through Office 6 for Macintosh, the current version seems downright amazing by comparison (6 preceded Office 98 for PC and wow, what a stinker), but nearly anything would have.

I’m not necessarily trying to defend MS here, but in the long run I can’t really claim great happiness and satisfaction with -any- application I have used. They all have major issues simply due to the fact that, well, it’s software. It’s gonna crash. I spent a lot of unhappy time in the past thinking “What the HELL is wrong with these people? Why can’t this just WORK?” and now I spend more time thinking “Eh, it’s software. I’ll find one that crashes the least.” It’s definitely the case that the more simple the tasks, the less likely you’ll experience complications. Most of my major issues have always been with applications that were performing some very intensive and/or complicated tasks.

And now I do help desk for a living and I hear a lot of complaints about software. About Office for Windows. About nearly everything that anyone works with. I can’t think of ANYTHING that our clients used that I have’n't heard “[INSET NAME HERE] just sucks. Everytime I try to [PERFORM A TASK] it does something stupid or crashes.” And it’s a daily happening. Thing is… it’s a hits and misses issue. We always remember when it crashes more than the majority of time it runs. When it crashes, and it’s critical, double the chances we’ll remember. It’s really this sort of thing that has me looking for something else besides tech support to do. Things happen. I’m happy to spend time and effort researching the resolution to a problem, but in most cases, the person asking me to resolve it only wants an immediate solution because what they are doing is critical NOW and they wouldn’t be calling me if they didn’t want the issue resolved immediately, even when for me it’s going to often be a longer term solution where I have to be studious and patient and methodical in searching for a solution, determining if that is the problem. etc. Ad inifinitum.

I am certainly not trying to downplay your Office woes, because I know with a great deal of my own personal experience at work on both Windows and Macintosh, there are a LOT of Office woes out there. I think I’m just saying, well, you’ll probalby find something you like more, sure, but whatever you use will have some problems along the way no matter what. And you’re right to have a breaking point that leads you to looking for another solution.

I know that I’ve personally lost countless hours of my life to the various iLife releases completely fucking up my 17,000 photo collection and me having to rebuild it, But they are still the best apps for out there that I like to use.

Good luck with your search! I would also love to know if you come across a suitable alternative for Office.

Sorry I missed this part.

Although it is easy to do without all the features of Word and Entourage, Excel, unfortunately, is a whole different ballpart. You can’t tell someone that is used to using Excel to switch to anything lesser. So Open Office is not quite cutting it in that regard.

But there is one problem though with Excel, and that is it seems the Windows and Mac versions are different enough to cause users switching back and forth some grief.

The simplest solution would probably be if Microsoft could get it’s act together and finally come out with a version of Office that simply works. The pricing is steep enough for users to really deserve a working version. And no more hush hush monkey business when faults are discovered. Microsofts handling of last year problems was absurd and degrading to say the least.

Hans