Broback's Blog

I just installed the latest maintenance update to Mac Office 2001.

This is the fourth revision to the 2001 R1 update which was called “Office X” (A port of Office 2001 designed to run natively on Apple’s then new operating system OS X.)

It’s been ten long years, but I am happy to say this is the most stable and responsive version of Mac Office 2001 yet.

They call this latest revision “Mac Office 2011” and like the previous minor updates it is only distributed on disk and invokes a hefty fee. It also requires entering a registration code.

Once again, there are no significant feature additions to report.

What’s been fixed in this release?

• The horrible bug that appeared in R3 (sometimes called Office 2008) where Macros/Visual Basic would refuse to load and Macros would be stripped out of files is now repaired.
• The temporary hang at launch bug which would delay application access for an unnecessary extra 30-45 seconds is finally fixed. Opening the app no longer requires taking a coffee break before getting to work.
• Disk thrashing that caused a frequent spinning beach ball occurs less frequently.
• Annoying screen redraw issues that would cause toolbars to detach and “float” thereby obscuring access to the document are gone.
• Entourage lag times largely eliminated. Clicking on buttons and making menu selections actually does things now.
• Email data is no longer locked in single giant corrupted vault file.
• Can work in email for several hours now without crashing or being forced to rebuild data file.

New bugs:
Entourage project manager refuses to load, and corrupted(?) resource file continually shows the application name as being “Outlook.” Does not seem to affect performance or reliability.

Inherent productivity gains:
The $800 spent on maintenance updates since 2001 is equivalent to cost of airfare to fly my wife and I to Maui. This loss of a distracting diversion has enhanced my productivity greatly.