Running Office 2004 and Office 2008

As mentioned previously, we bailed on Office 2008 for the Mac when it was apparent that Excel did not include functions that are essential for a business environment.  They are adding back the Solver, but the lack of VBA support, which makes it impossible to share Excel files with Windows users, is a non-starter.

Still, I was interested in trying to use the other pieces of the Office suite, particularly to see if they would not be such memory leaking RAM hogs as Office 2004.  I re-installed Office 2008 to give it a whirl.

The thing I like about it is that Entourage does not seem to have the same memory leak problem in 2008 as in 2004.  I suspected that running natively on Intel chips might make it better and it appears to have done so.  If I run Entourage 2008, I don't have to quit it by the afternoon to free up memory.  Word and the others don't seem to leak, but they hog the RAM from the get go.

Using both or either is not a big problem.  I can still run Entourage 2004 when I get tired of looking at the horrible purple colors with Entourage 2008.  I suspect this is because we use an Exchange server so it creates an identity for each.  If you did not do this, I have heard of problems trying to share the same identity.

I don't like the fact that I can't select which version is the default to open a file when double-clicked.  It defaults to Office 2008.  Not a problem with Word or PowerPoint, but the opposite of what I want with Excel.  I could trash Excel 2008 or uninstall all of Office 2008 and reinstall only Entourage, Word and PowerPoint.  When I get a second, I will try that and post results.

Bottom line is that you can run them both.  I will use them a little longer and give my thoughts on whether it is even worth it.  I suspect I will conclude that it isn't worth the cost, but who knows?

iPhone Update

Well, I have been using the iPhone 3G for about a month now and thought I would update my thoughts.

Overall, I like it, but don't love it.  There are things that I really like about it--web browsing, Google maps, cool apps, etc., but some of the things that I don't like are so bad, it colors my overall perception.

First off, as a phone it has worked well.  I have not had any issues with dropped calls, although it now appears that the problems folks are having are AT&T problems, not iPhone problems, since the same issue is cropping up no non-iPhone 3G phones with AT&T.  Different chips, same problems.  I am glad I am immune so far, but it underscores my biggest issue with trying one:  AT&T is just a bad cell phone provider.

My biggest gripes are emails.  It is a heck of a lot slower to manage email on an iPhone than on a Treo or BlackBerry.  The keyboard is slow.  The general interface is not designed for efficiency.  It is bad and needs an update with some keyboard shortcuts or something with the next version.

The thing I hate.  Absolutely hate, is the autotext.  Apple's is bad beyond description.  First off, it is random.  Frequently used words do not get suggestions, but others do.  There is no way to turn it off or edit it.  It is particularly vexing since it wants to suggest something stupid for a person's name in our organization.  Every time, I have to try to cancel the thing.  At the very least, the default should be that hitting space cancels the suggestion while you need to do something to accept it.  It is almost always wrong, so why should we have to cancel it?  Why can Treo, BlackBerry and even Microsoft do this fairly well, but Apple can't?

Apparently, you can fix this by jailbreaking the iPhone, but I am reluctant to do that.  If one of you clever apps developers will write something to fix this problem, you will have a very happy customer.

Accounting Software

The one major difficulty in running a business entirely on Macs is the availability of decent accounting software. Basically, you have two options: Quickbooks and MYOB. Quickbooks is easy to use and works fine for a sole proprietor, but it falls flat as things get a little more complicated. MYOB Accountedge, though it has a strange interface, can take a small business much farther.

It has a good chart of accounts functionality, good controls built in and is generally superior to Quickbooks in almost every way. However, it has limitations which our SmallBiz is starting to run up against. We need something a little more robust, that can handle consolidation and other things that are tougher to do in entry level packages. I would love to use Peachtree, but unless you are running Windows, that is not an option. I have tried almost everything I can find for the Mac, but nothing seems to be close.

We have looked at online stuff, like NetSuite, but we don't like that option very much. Perhaps we are a little old fashioned about having our financial information on teh interwebs, but the real issue is speed. We have a pretty speedy T-1 connection here, but these things are still very slow to run. Too slow.

So, the search goes on. Feel free to post any suggestions and I will definitely check them out.

Apple Keyboards

First off, let me say that I love the newfangled Apple Keyboards. I think they have given me a few extra WPM by not having to press so far down with each keystroke.

But in the WTF are they thinking department, why do they not make a wireless version with a number pad? They did it in the older wireless keyboards, so it can’t be the technology that eludes them. In a business, folks are often called upon to key in numbers, since it is not uncommon that numbers are important in business.

So I had to add another machine yesterday. Just about everything else in the office is wireless and (although it pains me a little to admit it, since I don’t buy into the Apple is waaaay cool thing) I like the clean look of no wires.

Unfortunately, that is no longer an option. I can either drag out one of the extra old school wireless keyboards (which isn’t a good option since there is a reason they are not being used), go with a wired keyboard or go with a wireless keyboard with no number pad. This latter is simply not an option for 99.9% of the folks here.

Come on Apple. Get a clue and make wireless keyboards with number pads.

Our Software

All of our machines, except the server run on OS X 10.5. I have not gotten around to upgrading the server, but hope to find the time soon.

Like most businesses, the bulk of what we do most days occurs in MS Office. We use Office 2004. I upgraded one machine to 2008 and had to go back. We simply cannot use 2008 because the new version of Excel (which we use probably more than anything) doesn't support macros. Because of this, key functions like XIRR and XNPV do not transfer from Mac to Windows very well. Well, not at all, so we are stuck. Excel 2008 really isn't any better than Numbers. It also lacks a Solver and other pretty important features.

For word processing, we probably use Pages and Word equally, depending on the user's preference. For presentations, we are almost 100% Keynote. Powerpoint used to be a great package, but now it is just a bloated pile of fail.

Our email, contacts and calendar are in Entourage. We don't love it and are always looking for an alternative (more on that later) but there are a couple of things we really like about it, like categories for contacts. We use a hosted Exchange service and love our provider of that for their great customer service. We aren't married to Exchange, but until Apple does something with their absolutely worthless iCal, there really isn't an alternative.

Other stuff we use often: Google Earth Pro, Fastrak Schedule, Omnigraffle, iChat, Safari and Firefox. We have a couple of machines with Parallels so we can run Windows. We basically do this for two reasons: 1) to test models in Excel before sending to Windows folks; and 2) to access certain web sites that only support IE.

Why Am I Here?

The Mac is almost the perfect platform for anyone who wants to run a business. You can do things with Macs that would require full time IT folks in a Windows environment. But, it is not without downsides. The biggest is the Apple just doesn't seem to care at all about small business, so there are not many good resources. Second, there are some holes in third party software available for businesses that run on OS X. It is getting better, but it does create problems for the business owner.

This blog will deal with the daily life of someone who runs a small business on the Mac and who is also the company IT department in doing so. Hopefully it will help other folks and hopefully other folks will help me. We will see.