Those of you that know me, know that I am an Apple convert. It’s been nearly 2 years since I purchased my first mac and have been in a’mored ever since. The only caveat is the office suite available for the mac was a bit old and crude in its implementation. Don’t get me wrong, even as old as it was it still seemed far more advanced than at the time office 2000. But wanted something that was fully integrated with my OS and a bit speedier I switched to the “office suite” from Apple. This time around they included a spreadsheet application (not quite as good as excel) but was a welcome addition since there wasn’t a spreadsheet application before. I found that the interfaces were as slick as one would expect from Apple and the software ran great. The bad news is that some of the features that I had become accustomed to in Microsoft’s office suite were not available still. The one big missing feature was the ability to do a mail merge form a list of names. Sure you can do one form your address book but if your pulling names form your website or have a list that you market to, you may not want to have those names in your address book just to do a mail merge.

Needless to say, I still like the offering from Apple as the footprint is small and the software does just about all I want it to. If I could get better exchange server support in mail.app then I would be in heaven. Today Microsoft will launch its new office suite for mac and it looks to be a serious contender. So much so, I may have ot switch. Strageny, just like there vista, the office suite comes in a variety of flavors and looks like it has to do with exchange server support in entourage. I think we’ll have to wait and see from the release what the real differences are. Check out the video below and I think you’ll agree that the updated suite looks good, but lets wait and see how well it is integrated into OS X

[wp_youtube]G1TniLEO9ew[/wp_youtube]

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Tags: offcie2008, microsoft, mac

I’m running out of channels. Every year (well at least the last 3) it seems that my wireless router goes a little bonkers. This year I was sure it was Leopard wreaking havoc on my network. Basically, I’ll have my internet then at random times it will drop. Sometimes it will drop the just the wireless connection, other times its just the internet with the intranet working without problem. This year after doing a little research online, I’ve found that the best thing to was to change wireless channels (something other than the typical 6 or 11). I was a little hesitant as the higher channels travel seem to travel further even though they are a higher frequency (the opposite should be true). The lower channels seem to be less prone to interference from other routers (seemingly my problem) or other electronic devices. It’s now been a week since the modification and I am happy to report that the network has been smooth running. No more hiccups and life is back to pre-holiday surfing. Although I went with the lower end of the channel spectrum, I find that the signal quality has not suffered in my small home. So if you are having problems with connectivity to your wireless router, try changing the channel and try and pick one that is at the opposite end of the spectrum to that of your neighbors