Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

List Price: $399.95 Discount Price: $217.50

Features:

• Streamlined user interface runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs
• Open XML file formats, the Office Art graphics engine, and other features that result in compatibility and file fidelity
• Professional design is within your power with hundreds of new customizable templates and suite-wide themes, SmartArt graphics, and the new Publishing Layout View in Word 2008
• My Day keeps you connected to all of the day's action. Command your calendar, tackle your tasks, and simplify your day
• Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, Microsoft Server Exchange Support

Customer Reviews:

junk piece of software [Posted on 2008-04-11]
Although I used (used?) mainly WORD, I am totally disappointed.
While working on a document the beach ball shows-up and that's it. No way to continue working, you have to force quit.
I still haven't managed how to complete one single document with this new junk piece of software.

From a Graphic Designer's perspective [Posted on 2008-04-16]
Granted, Microsoft Office is not a design program and should not be judged that way. However, as a Graphic Designer you have to use this tool quite often whether it is for Powerpoint presentations or creating stationary pieces in Word for your clients. From my rather short experience with this product, my feeling is a mixed one. My first impression was very positive actually. Office is notorious with its chaotic user interface, with menu items that seem to be placed randomly about, supposedly without any inner logic. For people accustomed with Adobe's superior user interface, Office can drive you mad. This new product is a step forward in this regard. The basic menu remained the same old inexplicable mess, but the added and expanded visual interface and palettes are putting some order where there was none before. So far, so good. Problems began when I actually sat down and started to work on a new Word template that was supposed to go to a PC using client. Importing a PNG image worked once. When trying to import a second time the program did not respond and I needed to restart it. After completing the document, I opened it on my older PC to see if it will work on my client's end. The transition between the two operating systems was not smooth at all. Tables got chaotic, copy changed colors, line breaks got all messed up. So I had to redo some work on my PC and then send it away. So bottom line is mixed. Barring the unfortunate bugs, it is a more pleasant experience than previous versions. If you prefer working on a Mac only environment like me, then you will have to check the final document on a PC, otherwise it is a recipe for trouble. A half baked cookie.

What a mistake [Posted on 2008-04-26]
I upgraded from Office 2004 to Office 2008 because Office 2004 had so many bugs in it that I could not do work sometimes. Little things like crashing, text disappearing all by itself, formatting being impossible to fix, graphics missing parts, spurious error messages like "This file cannot be saved because your hard disk is full"...

In Office 2008, completely updated, THE BUGS ARE EVEN WORSE than in Office 2004. I paid 500 dollars for this?

I don't care about what "features" it has or does not have. I just want to type and edit pages of text. The bugs in Office 2008 make typing and editing even more difficult than in Office 2004.

And since the people who made this have no common sense, they made the default file formats for everything different (for example, .docx rather than .doc), so if you make a document and save it and send it to someone with any earlier version of Office, they cannot open the file.

I have no choice but to use Office because that is what my clients use.

Worse than taking my money, they waste my time.

I hate microsoft, but....... [Posted on 2008-05-01]
I am NOT a fan of Microsoft. At work I use PC's and I have Office 2003, which I need to use extensively. I primarily use Word and Excel and occasionally I use PowerPoint and Publisher.

At home I have been using free open source software for years. I was primarily using NeoOffice. I found this to be just fine for my home use. At home we occasionally needed to create spreadsheets and word type documents. More often it was opening or viewing documents created by others. NeoOffice suited us well.

More recently my son's have been working with Office at school and had the desire to work on school projects from home. I bought this software reluctantly so that my boys could seamlessly move documents between their school based PC's and our home Mac's.

To date this is working fantastically. Furthermore I am quickly discovering that Office 08 for Mac is far superior to Office 03 for Windows. I see most of the complaints deal with lost functionality when upgrading from 04 for Mac. I was not in the situation and I realize that may make a difference. Also, it is quite possible the a newer version of Office for Windows is more like the Mac version, until my employer upgrade I will not know.

For now, I must confess that we are perfectly happy with this product.

Only for those forced to use Exchange [Posted on 2008-05-07]
As most of the other reviewers have written, this product is not worth buying. I got a free copy as I went to the product launch, and was soon incensed that Microsoft could sell this with a straight face.

Let's look at the listed "product features" one by one:
1. Streamlined user interface runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs
- Streamlined is an interesting word to use. I never had the displeasure of using Office for Mac 2004 on my Intel Mac, but from all reports it ran terribly. I shudder to think that this edition is supposedly running better. The Office applications are without a doubt the slowest applications running on my Mac, and this includes Parallels which allows me to run Windows in a virtual machine. The idea that this is "streamlined" is laughable.

2. Open XML file formats, the Office Art graphics engine, and other features that result in compatibility and file fidelity
- This is probably the main reason new-comers would buy Office, for compatibility with Office for Windows users. However, the compatibility is full of problems. Do not spend any time working on layout for your Word documents if you're then sending them to a Windows user; the layout will be completely ruined and you'll have to do it all again. I also have Office for Windows running through Parallels, and I usually end up using that if I hope to share my documents. Office for Mac just doesn't do it properly. Keep in mind that Apple's Pages can read docx (some say better than Word for Mac does), although it can't write back to docx.

3. Professional design is within your power with hundreds of new customizable templates and suite-wide themes, SmartArt graphics, and the new Publishing Layout View in Word 2008
- This is all well and good but if you wanted great templates and layout capabilities, you would buy iWork for a quarter of the price... which is certainly my recommendation. Did I mention the layout capabilities don't work reliably anyway?

4. My Day keeps you connected to all of the day's action. Command your calendar, tackle your tasks, and simplify your day
- If you own a Mac you have iCal. Why would this be a selling point to anyone?

5. Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, Microsoft Server Exchange Support
- And therein lies perhaps the main reason Office for Mac will still be purchase even though it is greatly inferior to competing products: Microsoft Server Exchange Support. Apparently much of the world runs on this these days. Let's be thankful that Google and SalesForce are teaming up to take it down once and for all...

So in summary, the real reasons to buy this product are as follows:
1. You are forced to require Microsoft Server Exchange Support.
Err... I put a number 1 because I thought there would be more but there actually isn't. Compatibility with Windows users is important, but Office for Mac just doesn't deliver here. Personally I would buy iWork - did I mention it is a quarter of the price for an equivalent product? Microsoft Office for Mac is a typical half-hearted, over-priced attempt from Microsoft, but no one can deny that their propaganda will make it a best-seller.

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