| Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
List Price: $149.95
Buy New: $109.00
You Save: $40.95 (27%)
New (47) Used (3) from $109.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  271 reviews
Sales Rank: 2
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Macintosh, Mac Os X
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Home & Student
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: GZA00006
Model: GZA00006
UPC: 882224526302
EAN: 0882224526302
ASIN: B000X86ZAS
Release Date: January 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Crashy and Slow on PowerMac G5 April 3, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
My experience with this software has been pretty annoying. I have a Dual 2.7 GHz G5 PowerMac w/ 6GB of RAM. The previous version, Office 2004 was problematic for me, as Entourage would often crash, even if my machine was idle! I've noticed almost no improvement in performance with 2008. And my Entourage mail rules are now completely broken unless applied manually.
On top of that, launch times for Entourage are now about 3 times slower than in Office 2004, and I even took pains to delete tens of thousands of messages from my mail database. In addition, I've had problems with Entourage and Excel stalling my entire machine upon program launch (usually during the "Optimizing Font Menu Performance" stage - and I do have a ton of fonts activated for my graphics work). This problem usually requires a force-restart.
The software itself is fine, but not really much different than Office 2004, except for some minor aesthetic upgrades, some of which don't look all that great anyway.
To be fair, I also have this software installed on my Intel MacPro, and it launches and runs very responsively on that machine.
Let's hope MS fixes these issues... this software feels very much like it was rushed to market 6 months too early.
 Amazon has the best prices!!! March 31, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love the price and the prompt delivery with the ability to track package online.
Thank you Amazon, You Rock!!!!! You're prices are the best!!!
NO MORE CRASHES! March 31, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Finally a version that doesn't crash x times a day. I was using 2004 before. This is a must have upgrade. Also must better screen layout and easier to work with.
 Need DVD Player March 31, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am very disappointed and will need to return. I thought the application was on a CD and it turned out to be a DVD which I can't use on my laptop.
Universal - Good, Features - Bad, Menus - Ugly... March 31, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Microsoft 2008...
The Good. It is now Universal Binary - if you have an Intel Mac, you'll see a major speed improvement - Office 2004 was dog-slow on my Intel Mac (2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo 2 MacBook Pro) due to the need for Rosetta translation. Initial start-up of all the Office 2008 programs is still very slow - maybe even slower than Office 2004. Once open and running, the speed difference finally becomes apparent.
The Bad. Many features went out the window. If you use Office special features, a lot of them are no longer available. Some of the features I noticed that were missing include: Visual BASIC, some macro functions, Data Analysts Toolpack (from Excel), and PowerPoint does something to the graphics (I think it changes the format altogether) so you can't do any editing after you enter them into a presentation.
Functionality. I was hoping that this version would include a lot of the functionality that the Windows version has - Outlook features especially. I am looking at giving Apple's Mail program another try to see if it is worth using it as well as the integrated Calendar and Address Book applications instead of Entourage. Pre-Leopard, Apple's Mail program fell short - it is hard to beat Entourage's all-in-one mail, calendar, and address book functions. I haven't tried the new version of Apple's Mail yet, but I will give it a try in the near future - when I have time to convert all my mail files. I also noticed Microsoft still hasn't fixed bugs from Office 2004. One big bug to me is if you copy or cut something, then start Office and try to paste it, you can't - Office doesn't see it. You have to have Office open before you copy text or graphics in order to paste it into an Office document.
Entourage Files. One poor design of Entourage is everything is contained in one large Entourage data file. Apple's Mail program uses many small files - one for each folder and a separate data file for contacts and for calendar events. That way if a file gets corrupted, you don't lose everything. Also it is better for back-ups. With Entourage, the whole file (mine is over 1GB) has to be backed up even though little has changed. With Apple's Mail program, each folder is a separate file so if you store a lot of old emails, you only need to back up the folders with newer mail - a hundred KB instead of a GB. Saves a lot of room on your back-up drive.
The Ugly. I don't like the major interface change. It is not as intuitive as Office 2004 for Mac or Office 2003 for Windows (Office 2007 for Windows has an interface similar to Office 2008 for Mac). It is like learning Office menus all over again.
Bottom Line: If you have an Intel-based Mac, it may be worth "upgrading" to Office 2008 for the Universal Binary feature. If you have a PPC Mac, stick with Office 2004. Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft intentionally holds back the development of the Mac versions in an effort to try to switch people from Macs back to Windows. The year-old Windows version is superior in many ways to the Mac version. And Office 2004 is superior in many ways to the newer Office 2008 version.
|
|
|
