Office:Mac 2008 Special Media Edition
Allen Harkleroad

June, 2008

I've been a longtime user of Microsoft Office both on Macintosh and Windows. Feature-wise and extensibility you just can't beat Office for productivity. I've been using Office X for a long-while and welcomed the opportunity to give Mac Office 2008 a review.

There have been quite a few changes in the new version of Office Mac 2008, and I can say that all of them are great improvements.

Word is a pleasure to use and now has a ribbon like bar similar to the Office 2008 Windows version. The tool panel has been expanded quite a bit and is very user friendly. You can even save as PDF direct from Word. 

Excel also has many improvements. I still prefer the Windows version of Excel (familiarity) , however the Mac 2008 version is a pleasant improvement of the Office X version. One of the features that I really "took to" was the new charts building feature. This is something I can use on a day to day basis.

PowerPoint looks and feels very similar to it's Windows counterpart which makes working on both Macintosh and Windows so much easier when working on presentations. No real learning curve involved between the two version. Good solid stuff! 

Entourage is now my favorite email application. I have used Outlook for many years (since Office 95) and in the past found Entourage to be quirky. Not so any more. It even connects to Microsoft Exchange servers, which to me is a blessing. If only the Outlook had some of the smoothness and usability that Entourage now has. Entourage is a clear winner in email applications.

The Digital Media Version of Office:Mac 2008 comes with a media asset manager that really does a fine job of managing images and such across hard drives and even networks.

Over all I give Office:Mac 2008 a 9 out of 10 in regards to usability, ease of use, features and productivity. I think the only thing missing from the suite is an HTML editor. I would love to see Microsoft's Web Expressions (replaced FrontPage) included in the next release of the Macintosh Office suite. Mac:Office 2008 is something I will be using every day.

Website: Microsoft mactopia

Requirements

• A Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (500 MHZ or higher) 
• Mac OSX 10.4.9 or higher
• Minimum 512 MB of RAM; more recommended
• 1.5 GB of available hard disk space
• HFS+ hard disk format (Mac OS Extended of HFS Plus)
• DVD Drive or connection to a local area network
• 1024x768 or higher resolution
• (Office 2008 for Mac and Special Media Edition Only - Connectivity to an exchange 2000, Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 for advanced email functionality.

Pricing 

Office 2008 Special Media Edition - Retail price (boxed) $499.95 - Buy Online $439.95 - Upgrades starting at $261.98

Office 2008 for Mac - Retail price (boxed) $399.95 - Buy Online $349.94 - Upgrades starting at $209.94