Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition

A bargain (2010-03-09) : 5/5
This version of Office performs very well, with all of the functionality I expect from those software products. It is a bargain at Amazon's prices.
Big improvement in Entourage but still major gaps (2010-03-07) : 3/5
This month, circumstances forced me to do spend a lot of time trying out alternative email packages,
and learning what I could learn from others as well. (Gory details on my personal web page.) Because I need to organize a real torrent of important information, with important attachments, I used to rely on Eudora 7 for PC as the main filing systems for my work, my independent activities, including even documents.

Many folks say that Entourage for Mac is a poor cousin to Outlook -- but not any more. It's much easier to file volumes of email in Entourage 2008 than in Outlook, and the search engine is FAR better. (The filing is theoretically the same.. but having three times as big a window in "file to" makes a big practical difference.) For reasons of security, and because Outlook couldn't do the job for me, I migrated to iMac at work this month -- but in teh end, decided to go with Apple Mail with the Rocketbox add-on instead of Entourage. Entourage really does have a much better interface with Microsoft Exchange servers; it synchronizes much faster and better. Unlike Apple Mail(where I work), it has no problems uploading folders BACK to the server... which is really crucial when moving mail around. Entourage's search engine offers many more categories, as many as Eudora 7 did, and those categories were really crucial for me in the past in locating year-old documents that suddenly became critical. However -- all accounts say that Entourage's search is MUCH, MUCH slower than Apple's (and perhaps less reliable?). Apple Mail's interface for filing lots of files (and even seeing them) is much, much easier and more powerful. Filters in Apple Mail
are MUCH easier to set up than in Outlook or Eudora (though I never got to Entourage for that.)

To get more search power in Apple Mail, there is a simple fix -- the Rocketbox add-on, which may
be more powerful in the future but already fills most of the gap. Too late to matter -- I learned that
the add-on NeoPro does the same for search in Outlook. I couldn't find anything like that for Entourage.
ALL three of these leading email packages officially let you move folders easily betwen personal computer, shared drives and server -- and can be used as gmail clients, so you can get web access and high quality filing and search both - depending on how good the gmail interface is, which I don't yet know. To get email out of Apple Mail -- it probably moves easily enough from Mac to Mac; Aid4Mail gets you easily
back to outlook.

All three of these products are infinitely better than Thunderbird or "Eudora 8" for folks
who don't care whether they just lose all email and documents more than a week old.
The level of product maintenance and reliability is already decisive. (Because Eudora 7 worked
so well for me, I made the mistake of "upgrading" to Eudora 8 at home. Only Aid4Mail could rescue me.)


What I should've purchased on day one (2010-03-06) : 5/5
About six months ago I converted from PC to Mac. Once I had the Mac, I had to then get some word processing software. The rep helping me recommended Iwork because it was similar to MS Office, significantly cheaper, and I could open Word documents. Having owned Iwork for almost the entire six months I can say that it's okay but it's just too different and basic. Too many extra steps required and to hard to re-learn how to do all the stuff I do in Word. Not to mention that when you save a file in word format it's usually distorted when you open it on a PC using word.
Then I finally decided to give MS Office 08 for Mac a shot. It's like music went off when I first booted up Word. Now when I open Word files I'm opening them exactly as they would appear on a PC using Office. I have access to all the familiar commands without having to go searching for them. I've only had the software for a week but already I've noticed a huge difference in my comfort and confidence when writing something.

Trust me, if you're a convert to Mac and you're not familiar with Iwork programs but have used Office for a substantial amount of time, I say spend the extra money and get MS Office for Mac.
Look elsewhere for what Office does(n't) do. (2010-03-05) : 1/5
MS Office for Mac is alright, but it doesn't include any software that can't be substituted with free programs (Openoffice, even Google Docs).

If MS would work to create a parallel to its Windows Office suite, I wouldn't hesitate to use the Mac version. That said, a lot of what the Windows version offers simply doesn't exist for the Mac, and the programs that do exist don't work quite the same way (see most helpful reviewers comments on this).

If you're a light Office user who doesn't do more than word processing and basic Excel files, snag this at a discount rate if you want. My guess is any light user could find better, free software to do what it is they want (Openoffice will even save it in a Word format for you).

My main gripe with the Mac edition is the cost. I can get Office for Windows for half what I'd pay for the Mac version, and that includes the discounts I could receive. Why Microsoft would put this out on the market at all is beyond me, and for this price - that's crazy talk. I hope future versions include more programs and ones that do exactly what you can do on a Windows computer. Even then, I'd be hard-pressed to shell out the money Microsoft seems to want Mac users to pay for the "privilege" of using their software.
Will not install on OS 10.5.8 (2010-03-03) : 1/5
I paid more than $100 for this software last week on Amazon.I have tried 7 times in the last three hours to get it to install. What a piece of crap. I had the free demo last summer, that worked. This says it installs but it won't launch anything, stating there is an install error. I have uninstalled it, searched for the files that the "uninstall software" somehow misses and thrown them away, too, as per lots of Mac forums where the same problem is posted. I've done this over and over. Now I have discovered that since I have OS 10.5.8, there is some sort of conflict between the Norwegian proofing software on MS Word and whether I have simple Chinese, regular Chinese, Korean, or Tibet language checked as my international preference? What the ....? So I do a custom installation without Norwegian, and I uncheck anything that looks like Chinese, Korean, etc. Still won't work. This is just nuts. And the box that the CD came in says copyright Microsoft 2009 and it was sealed, so this isn't a problem where I bought an old stock piece of software that existed before OS 10.5.8.leopard (not snow leopard). This is $100 I have thrown down the toilet. I rate this zero stars, and is it any wonder I have never bought a computer with Windows?