Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 user reviews

Pros Intel Mac code, speed, compatible with office 2007 file format

Cons Price, not a open format.

Summary If I did not need to exchange word and excel documents I would never buy this. iWork is all I would ever need for my needs.

However I do on a daily basis so having this lets me stay on my Mac and not run Windows.

Pros Entourage finally becomes almost usable

Cons Crashes. Stalls. Unexplained errors. Even on newly installed OSX

Summary I cannot express the utterly profound level of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and disgust I feel for the Office: Mac 2008 product. I have worked as a consultant for nearly 20 years. I watched the evolution of Microsoft from the days of the IBM PC XT through the years of the Internet. The current product represents either new depths of incompetence, utter disregard for customers, a callous attitude toward the Macintosh platform, or all of the above.

From the first install on a brand new Macintosh the software has not functioned properly. After repeated installs, including reinstalling the Mac operating system (just to be sure) I gave up and went back to Office: Mac 2004. Ahh…but that doesn’t work well either, since apparently components of 2008 cannot be entirely removed.

I believe it to be the ultimate height of hypocrisy that Microsoft positions Office products as unlocking ideas, potential, and productivity. I’ve neither the time nor the patience to list the many disappointments in Office: Mac 2008 product. I am surprised that the Microsoft legal department believes that the product meets adequate standards to survive a challenge on the Warranty of Merchantability.

I sincerely hope that the people who manufacture passenger jets, medical equipment, prescription medicines, and manage our urban infrastructure do not sink to the same level of incompetence embodied in Office: Mac 2008. For if they do, we are all doomed.

Pros Universal app (better perf on Intel Macs), Office 2007 file format support...

Cons Entourage still a second-class citizen to Outlook, no OneNote or InfoPath

Summary Overall, I'm really happy with this. I find it disappointing that two of the above reviews are completely worthless. If you haven't used it, don't review it. There is simply no other office suite on the Mac that compares. All of the open source office suites on the Mac have half-witted file format compatibility, and a UI that is completely confused - none are certainly Mac-like enough to be workable on the Mac.

I wish Entourage was Outlook, but for the Mac. Instead it seems like Outlook Express++ for the Mac. There also is no OneNote or InfoPath for the Mac - I wish there was. Oh well, another reason to run VMware Fusion. Finally, the best reason to upgrade (for those who blah-blahed on about why this isn't a good upgrade but open source alternatives are), this gives those of us with Intel Macs an office suite that runs well without PPC emulation.

Pros Features are slick

Cons Word is chock full of formatting errors, glitches, and ways to corrupt your data

Summary I was once a happy Microsoft customer...that is, until Vista...That pushed me to go Mac, and I love it. However, something has gone completely awry with Microsoft's quality control. This product crashes constantly (and none of my other software does)...It loses data, it has huge problems with cutting and pasting and the most basic functions you count on a modern day word processor for. It is so fundamentally unstable I am uninstalling it.