Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)My installation of Office for Mac 2008 upgrade moved along smoothly. I was concerned at first about whether the installer would remove my previous version of Office (Office 2004), since there was no message displayed, but the prompt did come later. The installer did not remove my previous Office Open XML converter, however; and of course I needed to remove the old aliases in the Dock (which were now non-functional). The installer was kind enough to add new icons to the Dock, however.
The upgrade software found my previous version (Office 2004) promptly, and didn't hassle me with product activation, which I was glad for. It also stored duplicate fonts in a separate folder and told me where that folder was located, rather than just overwriting or deleting them - another politeness.
The printed "Install Guide" that was included with the package, however, was pretty well a waste of paper and a no-brainer, as it offered nothing above and beyond what the average user would already know; i.e. stick in the disc and follow the instructions. I was pleased, however, that Microsoft trimmed down the packaging - Office 2004 was shipped in a huge and bulky plastic bubble case, with a hard-shell plastic CD case inside of that, and all wrapped with more plastic, whereas Office 2008's more modest paperback-sized lightweight box shows more environmentally-friendly (and space-saving) thinking.
It goes without saying that a full install of Office 2008 for Mac does require 1.1GB of hard drive space and a DVD drive, as opposed to the 630MB/CD-ROM install requirements of Office 2004. (These MS apps are really packing on the pounds...)
As for Expression Media, which is an image and photo management app that is bundled with this upgrade set, the installer worked fine, but the app was not added to the Dock, and I had to find it myself in the Applications folder. Expression Media asked me to import my iPhoto library as an Expression Media catalog, but the photos were not imported and I heard several hundred Mac warning sounds (seriously) that indicated the operation was unsuccessful. Expression Media didn't seem to understand what was going on, and thought that the photos had been catalogued, which they were not. (Admittedly, not a good first impression.)
Upon opening the Project Gallery, I found that Office had forgotten my recently used Office files, unfortunately. I also had to manually change the default application that runs the new .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx formats as well. I suppose that this is a non-intrusive decision on the part of Microsoft, but it is a bit time-consuming to make the changes.
Running Office 2008 on a Mac mini (Intel Core Duo 2GhHz, 2GB of RAM) under OS X Tiger, I found that the overall performance of the Office apps are noticeably faster than Office 2004, which ran under Rosetta on Intel Macs. Startup time for each Office 2008 app is very good, and response times are generally snappy. The font menu, for instance, used to take considerable time to display all of the dozens and dozens of fonts I have installed, but Office 2008 now fairly well breezes through them.
The compatibility checker, which verifies and addresses possible problems in using PowerPoint presentations across the various PowerPoint platforms (Mac and Windows) and versions (97-2008), is thorough, if not time-consuming.
As Office is such a detailed program, and there are so many people from all walks of life who use its individual applications, it's hard to say in one go what the possible benefits and disadvantages of moving up to Office 2008 for Mac would be. The "My Day" floating calendar and task management tool, for instance, might be useful for people who want a PDA-like approach to desktop time management. I upgraded to Office 2008 this time because (1) the cost was inexpensive, and (2) I was getting tired of using the Office Open XML converter each time I wanted to open an Office 2007 for Windows file in Office 2004. However, for the user who just needs to create a few bread-and-butter documents, bang out some basic spreadsheets, or draw up a simple product or school presentation to show to an audience, there may not be a compelling reason to move up to Office 2008. In short: if you're happy with what you have, then why change it? (And why would you be here, if you weren't thinking of upgrading? ;-) )
This having been said, I can see that Microsoft's Mac BU has been hard at work on this, and it was about time for an upgrade. (I would recommend also checking out special offers for this upgrade product on the Mactopia site as well.) As for Expression Media, however, if you already use Adobe Bridge or iPhoto, you may not find much added value in Microsoft's Expression Media, although concept-wise they do differ, and Expression Media clearly has some strong points (the ability to catalog and preview media without actually moving it into a library, for instance).
All said, it's safe to say that Microsoft Office 2008 is a product to grow on.
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