Google Docs & Spreadsheets competitor Office 2008 For Mac received pricing today. There are three versions, all of which require installation onto your Mac’s hard drive. The standard version features Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage and, at $399, will cost $399 more than Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
The "Special Media Edition" costs $499 more than Google Docs & Spreadsheets and "includes Expression Media, a digital media cataloguing program that Microsoft acquired from its 2006 purchase of iView Multimedia."
There’s also a Home and Student edition that sells for $149 more than Google Docs & Spreadsheets but that doesn’t connect to an Exchange Server or feature Automator scripting features like the other two more expensive options.
Office 2008 for Mac was delayed back in August and won’t be ready until January 2008. This version now supports Intel-based Macs and recent owners of Office 2004 are eligible for a free upgrade, minus $10 shipping. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available now and priced at zero dollars. It does not need to be shipped or installed because it lives on any modern web browser.
Microsoft sets pricing on Office 2008 for Mac [CNET News.com]
This post is like announcing that Honda has a new car that’s $30,000 more expensive than walking.
While Google Docs has a lot going for it, it is no serious competition to the complete MS Office suite, unless your needs for using the suite are very simple. Maybe Google apps will be a serious contender to replace stand-alone apps one day, but that day is not in 2007.
And Office 2004 users are not going to get Office 2008 for free unless they’ve purchased Office 2004 very recently.
Hey, it’s only 5 times as expensive as iWork 08.
Hey, it’s only 5 times as expensive as iWork ‘08.
And Neo Office is just as free as Google Doc’s without all the limitations of GD. Don’t get me wrong, I do use GDS but it is no replacement for a desktop office suite. I have fully transitioned to Open Office/Neo Office and happily will never pay Microsoft another office tax but GDS in not a true replacement. Neo Office on Mac is however.
Times are changing, but GDS is still a niche product.
I couldn’t agree more that this post is a little inane in that it’s implying that the office suite is useless compared to Google Docs. I like Google Docs – it’s fantastic as a hard-drive backup for some of my documents after a few recent self-destroying laptops have left me with hard drive paranoia, but the actual functionality of GDS is still pretty minimal. It also doesn’t help that while 99.9% of the world will continue to use office, when uploaded to google docs most of the formatting in any office document is completely lost. That’s going to keep the vast majority of people from bothering to make the switch.
While I might agree with the notion that GDS is somewhat limited when compared to a desktop office suite, I’d like to point out that the author never implied that MS Office is ‘useless’ compared to GDS. It’s rather clear to me that he wished to draw attention to the huge disparity in price.
While I imagine some of the previous posters can’t imagine life without all the whiz-bang features we’ve become accustomed to in an office suite, the vast majority of my friends and family ignore 95% of those features, maybe more. What’s startling to me is that they somehow have come to belief that there do not exist any worthy alternatives to MS Office and will nonchalantly ask if I have a copy they can borrow. When I point them to Openoffice.org and GDS, they resist, convinced that free == crap. It’s at this point I am reduced to pleading the case for the alternatives, while politely ignoring the fact that they’d just asked me to help them break the law.
I am grateful to articles and blog entries which lend credence to the notion that the alternatives are up to snuff, especially for those of us who would rather not pony up half the cost of a cheap laptop for their office suite.