<p>Yet another question. </p>
<p>It appears DS might need a Microsoft Office on Mac. Where do people get it these days?</p>
<p>I know there is Open Office but in some situations in a teamwork environment in a research group, they are required to use Microsoft Office. MS seems to have a strong hold in this market here.</p>
<p>Thanks on advance.</p>
<p>(If it matters, I think his Mac has just been upgraded to the latest Mac OS version today.)</p>
<p>Some schools offer a 4 year subscription for free, so check with your college IT department. Mine does. </p>
<p>As BB said, through the school. Sometimes it’s handled by the bookstore. </p>
<p>Many schools have access to Office 365 at no cost to the students. </p>
<p>Yes - echoing what’s been mentioned above. Check with your campus computer store or bookstore. We’ve found that open Office isn’t always compatible with MS Office. I’ve had some profs have difficulty opening OO documents from students. Hopefully your daughter will be able to get MS Office for free.</p>
<p>Even if it is not offered for free, the 4 yr subscription personal rate is $90 or so. </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I have passed the info to our S.
(I wish we had a daughter as well…LOL.)</p>
<p>He actually upgraded his 4-years-old MacBook Pro to Yosemite last night or today. I wonder whether its 4-year-old hardware would be underpowered for this version of Mac OS (is it 10.10.3 now? Not sure. I only heard that Apple has switched its Mac OS names from big cats to places in California since last year or so.)</p>
<p>Hmm…Has the WIFI problem on Mac OS X Yosemite been fixed? I vaguely remember I heard of this notorious problem not long ago.</p>
<p>DS just told me that he could get it from his school free of charge!</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>Oops - sorry - I probably was thinking that I’d like to have had a daughter too. I’m glad he got it for free. </p>
<p>Re: the upgrade, we’ve seen some problems with wireless and Yosemite. There’s a workaround that involves accessing the Mac keychain. It seems to not happen on all Macs so perhaps your son will be one of the lucky ones. A four year old MBP would likely be okay with the upgrade - it falls within the Apple specs for Yosemite. I haven’t upgraded yet from Mavericks but need to. </p>
<p>Here’s the workaround: Click the Go menu while holding down the option key. Choose Library from the list (Library is a hidden folder normally). Double click the Keychains folder, then double click login.keychain. On the left side, click System. Find your wireless network - double click. There are two tabs, Attributes & Access Control. Go into the Access Control and check “allow all applications to access this item”. </p>
<p>Thanks. Will pass this info to him.</p>
<p>Somehow he said the version he has installed on his Macbook Pro is 10.10.1 and he claims this is the newest.</p>
<p>I actually discouraged him from upgrading it to Yosemite right now because it is not always good to be an early adopter (unless he is an Apple fanboy - I know he is not.) But he has his own idea about when to do what. Well…spending time on this during the break may be better than spending all his time on social media till the wee hours in the early morning everyday. The worse is that he could roll back his OS version. (I think he has spent about a day on this already and has still not totally completed everything, I think he will complete everything soon.)</p>
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<p>So long as his macbook pro has 4 GB of RAM or more, Yosemite should run fine if all he’s using it for are basic internet and office applications. Now if he’s using it to do multimedia editing or high end stuff like that, he might feel it a bit slow…but still doable with some patience.</p>
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<p>Main problem I keep hearing about is how some professional level audio editing software professional musicians use have not caught up to Yosemite so my friends found they had to downgrade back to Mavericks in order to use their macs for their livelihood. </p>
<p>His RAM size is 4 GB. He has never been a gamer on the computer (because this “evil” parent intentionally had the the very slow dialup internet services when he was growing up) so he has never asked for a gamer’s computer. He played a lot on his game consoles while growing up though - I think it was the “golden age” of console games when he was growing up so he did not miss much.</p>
<p>However, his an amateur musician whenever he has the time. I think he used Logic Pro in the past (he switched from Cubase VST on Windows to Logic Pro and has never switched back.) But he is no longer into it that much - at least this is what I have observed during this break. He seems to have stopped using his Logic Pro, and I even did not notice he uses Garage Band this time. He still played on his instrument for a couple of hours a day during this break though - while upgrading his Macbook Pro. (He has several instruments in his dorm room and only one instrument at home. We shipped his instruments back and forth from/to his campus many times in his college years.)</p>
<p>He just claimed he had installed everything, and everything is faster and seems working , EXCEPT:</p>
<p>He could not shut down the computer using the menu. He needs to rely on the physical button to shut down the computer.</p>
<p>He looked up on the Internet and said other Yosemite users ran into the same problem also. Well…time to look around to see if he could locate some hack to get around this problem, or to just live with it for now.</p>
<p>The problem above is a minor nuisance and not a big deal. He is more concerned about a potential incompatibility problem between “End Note” (what is it?) and Microsoft Office. He said he had run into the problem of End Note crashing Microsoft Office when he upgraded his computer system in the past. If he runs into this problem and could not find a work-around, he will have no choice but roll back his OS version.</p>
<p>DS located this workaround for the shutdown problem on Yosemite. Not sure if one or more of these 9 hacks would work:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.iphonetopics.com/osx-yosemite-shutdown-problems/”>http://www.iphonetopics.com/osx-yosemite-shutdown-problems/</a></p>
<p>He is happy about this upgrade so far because the system is now more responsive.</p>
<p>He also said he can now receive an instant message sent to his iPhone by default (without additional setup on the Mac.) Likely a result of Yosemite"s capability of allowing the user to make a phone call from/to Mac?</p>
<p>So both his Mac and his iPhone have been upgraded to the latest software in the past two days. I think he is more and more like Apple’s fanboy.</p>
I think journeyed.com sells a 4 year office 365 subscription for about $80 to students.
Some free alternatives:
@Dadof3, Thsnks. This info could be useful for some students whose college does not provide the MS Office to the students free of charge. (e.g., like me, who is not a student.)