Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Upgrade
by Microsoft Software
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List Price: Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Upgrade
Customer Review: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Summary: 5 Stars
This is really a very good upgrade from Office 2004. Much more versatility. Am finding a few quirks and hiccups but should be cleaned up by the next update. Customer Review: Open XML support is handy, but that's about it
Summary: 2 Stars
After a year of frustration, Microsoft has finally enabled Mac users to open and save documents in Office 2007's Open XML format (.docx, .xlsx and so on).
But apart from that and some pretty interface improvements, I see little reason to have upgraded.
SPEED: Some people claim a speed improvement in Office 2008 on Intel Macs, but I have seen none on my current iMac running Leopard.
ADVANCED FUNCTIONS: Office no longer supports macros created by PC users.
E-MAIL: I've noticed one improvement with Entourage 2008: It crashes less often than Entourage 2004 on my Intel Mac. But I've noticed little improvement, otherwise.
Entourage does not provide significantly improved support for Exchange. Group calendaring and out-of-office message support are only marginally improved. There's still no synchronization of tasks, notes or rules.
In recent years, the ability to customize and enhance one's e-mail application has become standard procedure for heavy-duty users of e-mail. But while other mail applications such as Mozilla Thunderbird support plug-ins regardless of one's host operating system, Entourage still does not work with Outlook add-ons and vice-versa.
Speed is important when searching through thousands of old e-mail messages. But strangely, Entourage's internal search feature seems slow as ever. Yet searches for the same Entourage 2008 messages are almost instantaneous in Leopard's Spotlight. So I question Entourage's partial but incomplete integration with Spotlight.
ONLINE INTEGRATION: Office Live Workspace (Microsoft's answer to Google Docs) does not recognize Mac installations of Office 2008 and therefore is rendered almost useless.
MESSAGING: Finally, MSN Messenger -- after all these years -- STILL does not interconnect with AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber and other widely accepted instant-messaging protocols.
Office 2008 is an expensive, glitzy anachronism in an age of online and open-source office applications.
Customer Review: Microsoft Visual Basic Fix
Summary: 2 Stars
Microsoft has a website on Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. They do not offer a trial version, nor are they straightforward about limitations or 'downgrades' regarding PowerPoint images or Excel statistics analysis.
No one seems to address the continued cross-platform problems with Excel documents by email attachment. This occurs even though Microsoft writes both the Mac and PC Excel software packages! It almost seems like intentional sabotage to keep users out of the crystal clear Mac OS X world and in their always-behind copycat Windows.
However, this Microsoft site does address how to use Visual Basic macros in Office for Mac 2008.
Customer Review: Office 2008 is a triple "Screw You" to educational users!
Summary: 1 Stars
As an educational user who uses Entourage 2004 to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server for school email and contact lists, I am unbelievably frustrated with the lack of Exchange support in the student/teacher versions of Entourage '08.
And to add insult to injury, my previous copy of the 2004 Office suite is not eligible for upgrades. This mean's that for me (and hundreds of other users who use a Microsoft Exchange server at school) the only option is to drop the full $399 on the "full version" of the program.
As if that was not enough, since the educational version offers three user licenses (which I us for my three computers: home, laptop and office) and the "full version" only offers one user license, that $399 price tag just tripled to almost $1200 in software that just last year cost me $150. Microsoft's little change is a HUGE deal! If I want to be legal in my use of their software, I'm gonna have to drop $1200. I can tell you - that isn't gonna happen. Something like this makes Apple's iWork (limitations and all) look more appealing.
So much for the idea that MS and Apple where going to play nice for once. Microsoft doesn't know it's elbow from it's @%&, because it was only a few months ago that they offered a brilliant "anti-piracy" program that allowed college students to purchase a legal version of the PC Office Suite at less than $70.
I guess we'll have to see if several months from now, they offer the same thing to Mac users because I'm sure that a "bone-head" move like this is usually what it takes to make people "borrow" software from a "friend". In fact, when I called Microsoft to ask if this was all true, their own tech told me that if I "lost" my unlock key, I could buy another for only $10. I guess even Microsoft's own staff can see just how stupid this move is.
No support in the 2008 education version and no upgrade path from the 2004 education version... what a triple slap in the face to paying customers who don't steal their software.
Customer Review: NO VBA!!!!!!!!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
If you do any programming or statistical analysis with Office, stay away from this ripoff!!! VBA and the Analysis Toolpak are gone -- and of course, you won't find this out until AFTER you've wasted your money!!!!!