Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This version of Office 2008 is an improvement over Office 2004 in that it runs natively now on an Intel Mac. It is a major improvement in speed. And the stability has improved in that it has not crashed on me in the week it has been in use. Office 2004 used to crash almost daily before. If you do not have an Intel Mac do not bother with this upgrade. You are better off with Office 2004.
The look on Office 2008 is aesthetically pleasing and is more consistent with the elegant look of OSX.
That is about the best I have to say for this new upgrade. Word is so buggy I feel like I am working with a Beta version. I work a great deal with Spaces in Leopard and I have found that Word documents will jump to other windows. I have also found that when working in the notebook layout it can become unstable and partially disappear on me. The work arounds I have been using to stop this is I minimize the documents or I open another program in the Spaces window and then return to the document.
Word is still an excellent word processing program. The Notebook layout is essential for the note taking that I have to do, which other word processing programs don't have. Since I have to share documents with others it is handy to have a standard program with which to work.
The default format in Word is now Microsoft's .docx (xtml), which can be changed in the preferences to the more universal .doc.
When I have gone to the Microsoft website they have admitted that many of these problems are bugs and that they are being addressed. Another work around that MS recommended in Word was to create a new template from which to operate as it seems that the present template can be easily corrupted.
Since Office 2008 no longer works with macros and Visual Basic I have had to abandon the Excel self-calculating Invoice template I used to use all the way back to my PC days. I am now using a template that is in Pages - that works beautifully. The reason I am sticking with Excel over Numbers is that Excel is still a more powerful program. It keeps track of things that Numbers won't keep track of.
I am happier that Entourage is now more stable and responds better than the 2004 version. The My Day widget is a nice idea, but there is almost no room for customization and really makes no difference to how I organize my day.
I am left wondering if Microsoft is planning to go out of business. It seems that their products are getting worse. It is as if they have become bereft of any sense of creativity or innovation.;0) I had read that Office 2008 was designed by Mac enthusiasts. I think that was Microsoft propaganda. The impression I get is that Microsoft does not care about Mac business.
Is this a worthwhile upgrade? Not yet. If you can wait for the bugs to be worked out it will be a more satisfying upgrade. If you are dependent upon Visual Basic, or are operating on a PPC, save your money.
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