“MacTech” has released the results of its extensive benchmark study of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. The goal was to see how well the new Office applications performed compared to Office 2008 and 2004 across a variety of configurations. The results show significant speed gains all around, particularly in general app launching times, and in Excel and PowerPoint operation.
For testing purposes, the tests were performed on a set of current-model Intel Macs — including a MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac. This naturally gave an advantage to both MS Office 2008 and the 2011 editions over the older, PPC-centric Office 2004, which requires Rosetta to run on Intel machines.The purpose of the testing and the article are to answer the questions “How well does Office for Mac 2011 run compared to Office 2008 and 2004?”
Overall, Office 2011 was on average 50 percent faster — or more — than Office 2008 at nearly everything, though there were a few selected places where the older version kept or beat the new one. Some areas featured remarkable improvement — successive app launches, WordArt searches and overall Excel performance were at least doubled in some cases becoming to rapid to accurately measure — while Outlook, the newest component, provided very modest gains over Entourage and struggled to keep up in many areas.
MacTech Labs has been doing product evaluations and testing for over 25 years. Our focus is to help those in the industry not only in making tough decisions, but with real-world answers. In this case, we wanted to help people understand how the new Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 performs,” says Neil Ticktin, editor-in-chief/publisher, “MacTech Magazine.” “These tests clearly accomplished their goal and will aid decision makers in understanding what to expect out of Office 2011 compared to Office 2008 and 2004.”
Compared to Office 2004 on an Intel Mac, the general conclusion was the 2011 edition was from a user’s perspective “infinitely” faster, doing most tasks instantaneously by comparison. In almost every test, Office 2011 was two to three times faster overall.
You might like: