Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 (Home and Student Edition)

Pros: Better tool palette organization for improved productivity; 3-user license; cleaner install process; a few more capabilites than Office 04

Cons: Serious Mac Keychain bug (masquerading as Safari bug) created when simply trying to register product online; bug in MS website won't LET you complete registration; price for marginal amount of benefit

Summary: I bought this upgrade in the hope that I could do three things I couldn't do with Office 2004: 1) Create keyboard shortcuts in Powerpoint (to improve my speed of use); More easily edit and manage animations on a slide (Office 2004's interface for this was primitive, clunky and laborious for even the smallest changes) and create animations with elements on a slide such that I could move one or more elements from one area of the slide to the other.

The first feature I expected, given that this is the first upgrade in 4 years, and Word 2004 and Excel 2004 both had this capability. Microsoft has graciously provided this feature.

Feature #2 I noted from a friend's Office 2007 for Windows; I simply assumed that Microsoft would give this upgrade features similar to those in Office 2007. I was wrong.

Ditto with Feature #3. While MS has revamped *where* this information is displayed (now in the tool palette instead of a dialog box that goes away once you're done), the user is still, frustratingly, required to move elements in the order of animation window up and down via two up and down arrow buttons -- not by dragging and dropping the elements in the list themselves. This interface *has* been marginally improved by the ability to reorder multiple selected elements in the list at the same time -- but that seems to be it. No Feature #2 at all -- i.e., no ability to specify so-called "sprite" movement (elements on a slide that can move around the screen a user-specified amount.

Very little progress in 2 years -- despite the appearance of all these features in Office 2007 for Windows. Keeping such features out of their software on purpose, for use later in subsequent versions of the product -- so-called "dry powder" -- is inexcusable in today's climate of innovation.

But what I didn't expect was to find that my attempt to register the product -- be a good doobie and check in with Microsoft about my purchase -- not only resulted in an inability to register after going through a multi-step process (MS "failed to recognize" the product ID its own install disk gave me once I put in my license key), but it created a bug in my Keychain. The only fix that worked, after combing discussion lists for several hours, mind you -- was to delete my keychain. This confusing process wound up erasing all my keychain data.

In sum, beware registering this product, until Microsoft publishes a fix for it, and publicizes it. And, as a new user to this version, I can only imagine what other ugliness lies in store.