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| Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
List Price: $149.95
Buy New: $109.99
You Save: $39.96 (27%)
New (47) Used (5) from $94.59
Avg. Customer Rating:  267 reviews
Sales Rank: 2
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Macintosh, Mac Os X
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Home & Student
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: GZA00006
Model: GZA00006
UPC: 882224526302
EAN: 0882224526302
ASIN: B000X86ZAS
Release Date: January 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Universal - Good, Features - Bad, Menus - Ugly... March 31, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Microsoft 2008...
The Good. It is now Universal Binary - if you have an Intel Mac, you'll see a major speed improvement - Office 2004 was dog-slow on my Intel Mac (2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo 2 MacBook Pro) due to the need for Rosetta translation. Initial start-up of all the Office 2008 programs is still very slow - maybe even slower than Office 2004. Once open and running, the speed difference finally becomes apparent.
The Bad. Many features went out the window. If you use Office special features, a lot of them are no longer available. Some of the features I noticed that were missing include: Visual BASIC, some macro functions, Data Analysts Toolpack (from Excel), and PowerPoint does something to the graphics (I think it changes the format altogether) so you can't do any editing after you enter them into a presentation.
Functionality. I was hoping that this version would include a lot of the functionality that the Windows version has - Outlook features especially. I am looking at giving Apple's Mail program another try to see if it is worth using it as well as the integrated Calendar and Address Book applications instead of Entourage. Pre-Leopard, Apple's Mail program fell short - it is hard to beat Entourage's all-in-one mail, calendar, and address book functions. I haven't tried the new version of Apple's Mail yet, but I will give it a try in the near future - when I have time to convert all my mail files. I also noticed Microsoft still hasn't fixed bugs from Office 2004. One big bug to me is if you copy or cut something, then start Office and try to paste it, you can't - Office doesn't see it. You have to have Office open before you copy text or graphics in order to paste it into an Office document.
Entourage Files. One poor design of Entourage is everything is contained in one large Entourage data file. Apple's Mail program uses many small files - one for each folder and a separate data file for contacts and for calendar events. That way if a file gets corrupted, you don't lose everything. Also it is better for back-ups. With Entourage, the whole file (mine is over 1GB) has to be backed up even though little has changed. With Apple's Mail program, each folder is a separate file so if you store a lot of old emails, you only need to back up the folders with newer mail - a hundred KB instead of a GB. Saves a lot of room on your back-up drive.
The Ugly. I don't like the major interface change. It is not as intuitive as Office 2004 for Mac or Office 2003 for Windows (Office 2007 for Windows has an interface similar to Office 2008 for Mac). It is like learning Office menus all over again.
Bottom Line: If you have an Intel-based Mac, it may be worth "upgrading" to Office 2008 for the Universal Binary feature. If you have a PPC Mac, stick with Office 2004. Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft intentionally holds back the development of the Mac versions in an effort to try to switch people from Macs back to Windows. The year-old Windows version is superior in many ways to the Mac version. And Office 2004 is superior in many ways to the newer Office 2008 version.
 Word won't Work March 27, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am having a problem with Word. It won't let me retrieve any documents I saved. It then freezes my entire computer. I have talked with MS but they say it is a Mac problem. They don't know what is wrong either.
 Office Mac 2008 Not Worth Its Cost in Packaging March 27, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Microsoft's Mac unit did Mac users an injustice with Office 2008, bringing the package down to the functionality of Apple's iWork '08. Stripping VBA and the data analysis toolpak out of Excel is inexcusable, but it's even worse. Many of the Upgrades Microsoft made from Office XP to Office 2003, let alone Office 2007 are not included (e.g., right indent in Excel). Word and PowerPoint also seem more like Office XP as well. Sure formatting palettes are nice, but that's just repacking functionality, not improving it.
As bad as the stripped down Office 2008 is, it gets worse. PPT, Word, and Excel crash so often on my new Leopard MacBook Pro, that I use iWork for most of my work and switch to the Windows version of Excel via VMWare Fusion when tasks demand them. I would suggest staying with Mac 2004 until Microsoft does an upgrade to the Office Suite that does more than change its packaging.
 It's about time Microsoft Office for Mac's updated March 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is a great product -- sans microsoft outlook! it works much more seamlessly opening/reading office files than iworks!
 Typical Microsoft March 26, 2008
Typical Microsoft program, slow to open, needed updates immediately, occasional computer freeze but widely accepted software and nice features over Office 2004 for Mac. Really do like Entourage.
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