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Mac Gurus - I need your help please!

Bush Girl

Bush Girl

Well-Known Member
I have a 7 yr old iMac running Snow Leopard using Ms Office Mac 2004 and PSE8. It works fine but it is getting a little clunky and the Office software is not up to standard for my kids homework now. We've done the maths on a new Mac (be it desktop or laptop) vs a PC laptop and the odds are not in Apple's favour - £1,700 vs £400 - it doesn't matter what your currency is, you can all see which is logical thing to buy.

So, my questions for the Mac Gurus - Sara, Suzy and anyone else who knows - are:

1. If I upgrade my iMac to Mountain Lion, will PSE8 still run?
I don't want to upgrade the PSE as V8 uses Bridge which I love and later versions use Organiser which I hated in my previous pre-Mac life.

2. Will Office Mac 2004 still run on Mountain Lion?

3. Is Office Mac 2011 worth upgrading to? We can get a student copy for £96.

Any advice will be very gratefully received - thank you!
 
Selena, not sure if I can help you as I just recently got my new IMac and love, love it!! I was fortunate enough to find a great deal on Office mac for only $40 from someone who just could not get used to using a mac. You can also get a new version of CS6 Student edition for around $150.00 or so which is a real savings. A new system to learn, but really not that difficult and I know that you would love all it can do for you! I think that upgrading to the new Mountain lion might cause some glitches with your old version of PS8 but what do I know, I'm a newbie Mac Owner. Hopefully some of the guru's here can help you out!!
 
#1 -- I agree with Trudy, it might be worth upgrading to PS instead of PSE. I still have CS5, not CS6... but Bridge is CS5 is still pretty awesome. PSE8 is supposedly supported by Mountain Lion, but like Trudy said it's known to cause glitches.

No to #2 -- I just upgraded to Office 2011 myself for $10 through DH's work, a lot of employers have programs like that now... I can't remember what Microsoft calls it.

#3 -- I honestly have no opinion yet, I still find myself doing everything in Google Docs so I can access it from anywhere.
 
Thanks girls.

I looked up the student price of PS CS6, as Ginny's now eligible for educational copy - and it's $295!! The non-student version is $1,100 :flypig:!!~



Do you guys think my old iMac will cope with going to Mountain Lion? Is it likely to run better with MLion?
 
When my last macbook was only three years old, I upgraded to Snow Leopard and that killed it... even though it was supposedly able to support it. I wouldn't upgrade the old one, maybe just do some clean up (LOVE CCleaner) and maintenance instead.
 
Selena, have you been to the Apple store to chat with them? They might have a better idea.

As for a new iMac, you can get education pricing. That's how I bought my new rMBP. You can use Ginny's school ID card to get discount.

Upgrading to a new OS on an old machine might cause more problems actually. You only have to read the comments on the App store to realise that a lot of older software might not work with the new OS.
 
I wouldn't count on the old computer running Mountain Lion well. We have some older computers that just aren't handling the upgrade well. Heck...even my 3 year old Macbook Pro is crashing and freezing a ton more frequently after the upgrade.

1. If I upgrade my iMac to Mountain Lion, will PSE8 still run?
My PSE 6 works ok. But it is crashing a lot more frequently too. Enough that I get a tad frustrated nowadays. I am considering looking for a cheap version of PSE 9 or 10 on eBay. I figure those would work a bit better.

2. Will Office Mac 2004 still run on Mountain Lion?
I can't say for sure on this. I have 2008 and 2011. However, I have discovered that Office makes my computer run really, really hot. Since they are hot anyway, it's gotten to the point of overheating. I think that's why caused my laptop to die back in the fall. Thank God I had recently backed up to Time Machine and I could just do a restore. I installed a free temperature monitor and it was amazing how much hotter any word processing program makes it...but Office makes it even warmer than Pages. I have started to use a combination of Google, Notepad, TextEdit, and occasionally Pages or Word for more formatting intensive things.

3. Is Office Mac 2011 worth upgrading to? We can get a student copy for £96.
I don't know if there are any features that stand out as worth upgrading. Other than the menus being fancier on 2011 (which actually makes it harder for my brain to find things LOL), I haven't noticed much different between that and 2008. But again, I've started moving away from Office more.
 
petey111 said:
2. Will Office Mac 2004 still run on Mountain Lion?
I can't say for sure on this. I have 2008 and 2011. However, I have discovered that Office makes my computer run really, really hot. Since they are hot anyway, it's gotten to the point of overheating. I think that's why caused my laptop to die back in the fall. Thank God I had recently backed up to Time Machine and I could just do a restore. I installed a free temperature monitor and it was amazing how much hotter any word processing program makes it...but Office makes it even warmer than Pages. I have started to use a combination of Google, Notepad, TextEdit, and occasionally Pages or Word for more formatting intensive things.
Click to expand...

I totally forgot about this -- it happens to me too. Halfway through college, right after Google Docs came out officially, I switched to Google Docs and just used Word to make sure I was in APA format. Google Docs has advanced so much that I wouldn't have to worry about that now. I honestly only got Microsoft Office again because my PD support group uses Word for their newsletter, and it's my responsibility to put it on the website.
 
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