Tag: microsoft-office

Categories
Software

Microsoft Office 2008 Updater Hang

Had I known about this bug earlier I would have saved about 90 minutes of my afternoon setting up a new MacBook Pro for my mom. Apparently since the last security update, the installer script for SP1 can no longer operate correctly resulting in an internal hang with low CPU. Killing the installer process shows an Apple Events error.

I ended up doing something a little different:

  1. I ran ps -u [USERNAME] killing any Microsoft related processes. I kept the terminal window open (this is key).
  2. Ran Installer again. This time it was successful
  3. Looked at above ps output and found where the updater program downloaded the installer. It’s generally /Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/[RAND]Office 2008 SP1 Update (12.1.0). The download is over 100 MB, so that can save a few minutes.
  4. Ran updater again until no more updates found

You could follow the directions, logout and login again with the shift key held down, the only downside is the auto updater will re-download the update (which is over 100 MB).

Categories
Open Source Software

Microsoft Office

Anyone else thing Microsoft Office is way overpriced? Take a look at your options. $149 is Academic (you’d think for that money, you get Professional on an Academic license, but your wrong). The cheapest upgrade is $239.

Wouldn’t mind upgrading to have XML support, but is there anyone who can justify those prices?

Microsoft should be ashamed at their pricing. Thankfully there is OpenOffice.