Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac: Home and Student Edition

Fantastic Software

Strengths: Familiar Office programs that you know and (hopefully) love

Weakness: If you switch between Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac (like I do) then the interface differences can be a little annoying.

Look, there really isn't much to say...if you need/are used to/prefer to iWork MS Office then you have to buy Office 2008 for your Mac.

If you have an Intel Mac then you will notice a big improvement from Office 2004 and the neat new tricks in Word make creating documents a breeze.

By joefrank64k - Mar 29, 2008

Office 2008 for MAC

Strengths: similar to the Office for Windows

Weakness: formatting palette instead of the toolbar known from Windows

I bought this product for my new Macbook regarding to import my documents from Windows and because I have to be able to write "doc.uments" in the future. What I like is that in general Office 2008 for Mac works similar to the version for Windows. Except from the formatting palette which is different from the known toolbar. This is a weakness because often the screen view is bothered by the...
Read Full Review

I bought this product for my new Macbook regarding to import my documents from Windows and because I have to be able to write "doc.uments" in the future. What I like is that in general Office 2008 for Mac works similar to the version for Windows. Except from the formatting palette which is different from the known toolbar. This is a weakness because often the screen view is bothered by the formatting palette. But if you need an Office for Mac than you can work with.

By snickers2006 - Mar 18, 2008

Great software

Strengths: Works well with my Mac

Weakness: Doesn't include all the programs that the Windows version does

This is a great product for someone who is migrating from the PC to Mac world. The features are very similar to the PC version. I would recommend it to anyone, but especially those who have converted from one OS to the other!

By 43isrobert - Jan 31, 2008

Office 2008 for Mac (full retail box)

Strengths: Word and Excel XML file support (XML is also used for Office 2007 for Windows)

Weakness: Excel no longer has Visual Basic.

Excel no longer has Visual Basic. Everyone complained, so Microsoft has committed to bringing it back in the next version. I think this was a calculated way to cut-down on Office 2008's development time and to use the reinclusion of Visual Basic as a seling point for the next upgrade! While the Mac Business Unit is better than the rest Microsoft, they still are just a part of Microsoft. Switch to...
Read Full Review

Excel no longer has Visual Basic. Everyone complained, so Microsoft has committed to bringing it back in the next version. I think this was a calculated way to cut-down on Office 2008's development time and to use the reinclusion of Visual Basic as a seling point for the next upgrade! While the Mac Business Unit is better than the rest Microsoft, they still are just a part of Microsoft. Switch to Apple's iWork '08 which has full Word/Excel/PowerPoint support and is cheaper. You won't be sorry.

By Anonymous - Jun 18, 2008

Office 2008 (Home & Student)

Strengths: Powerpoint (the only solid improvement) has a lot more bells and whistles

Weakness: Entourage (Home & Student) does not support exchange server accounts. Overall Office 08 uses more resources so it is slow on machines that are older than negative 1 year old.

Excel is so-so. It has A LOT more space to work with, but it's meaningless without a powerful computer. Even Excel 04 is slow on my MacBook Pro (purchased new 8 months ago). It also does not appear to have a solver, which is very frustrating when working on statistics problems.

Word is word. How complicated can you get with word?

By tokamkoto96 - Apr 23, 2008