Microsoft Special Edition Upgrade Version Survey 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. I've owned every version of Office since the product shipped for the Mac. I qualify--I feel--for the "Upgrade" version of the product. Since the last time I have gotten a Full installer from Microsoft for Office:Mac, Apple has completed transitions from 68K to PowerPC to Intel, OS 8 to MacOS 9 to Mac OS X (10. 0, 10. 1, 10. 2, 10. 3, 10. 4, and 10. 5). That Full installer was for Office 98. I was hoping, after having complained to the MBU folks at Macworld after the release of Office 2001 about an "upgrade" installer that required a previous install to function, that Microsoft would get the hint and help make things easy for Mac users. They did not. Office 2004 not only had the same problem but made things even worse because users were forced to have 2001 installed with Classic to kick off the "upgrade" install process, for the first OS X version of Office! I complained again and was assured MS was listening. But Microsoft has not listened. And now, with this "upgrade", they expect me to attempt to install Office 98 on my new Intel-based iMac in order to "upgrade" to 2001 to "upgrade" to 2004 to "upgrade" to 2008. Long story short, that won't work. And Microsoft's Pre-Sales and Licensing team's response: buy the full version. So save your money. Office 2008, from all the reviews and reports I've read, really isn't worth it anyhow. Transition to Mail. app and iCal and give Pages and Numbers a try. Microsoft, you've lost a customer. Too bad you've decided to battle piracy by creating pain for your best customers over something so trivial as a Full vs Crippled activation process. Furthermore, Amazon should change the product description to CLEARLY indicate that this product is NOT usable out of the box for a fresh installation. Simply being a previous Office:Mac license holder is NOT adequate. I installed Office 2008 on a 1. 25GHz G4 iMac with System 10. 4. 11 . Since other reviewers have discussed the features and functionality of Office 2008 thoroughly, I am going to focus my review on the experience of upgrading from Office v. X to Office 2008. I'll also comment on Expression Media because it's what sets the Mac Office Special Media Edition apart from the other versions of Mac Office. Background: *I have experience with several versions of Mac Office, beginning with version 4. 2 . I also have used Office 98, Office 2001, and as mentioned above, Office v. X before upgrading to Office 2008. *The way I use Office has changed over time. I made extensive use of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in graduate school and in various professional settings through Office 2001. Now I mostly use Excel to do basic financial analysis and Word to write personal documents. Installation: *Installation is straightforward, using Apple's familiar Installer mechanism. I prefer this method to the old drag-and-drop installation method because OS X is so sensitive to where things are installed. *The installer program automatically finds older versions of Office and allows users to delete them easily. *Many customized settings can be transferred from previous Office installations, including dictionaries, autocorrect lists, and proofing tool settings. *Once Office 2008 is installed, several updates must be downloaded and installed. Microsoft should have made this process more user-friendly. Users must manually shut down other applications, including the Office 2008 Installer, before running the update installer. Pros: *Office is now a Universal Binary so the same program will run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. *An Uninstaller is placed in the Office folder automatically. *Office will check for updates automatically on a schedule chosen by the user. No more messing around on the Microsoft website, hoping you didn't miss a Service Pack or Critical Update. *Users can now turn the feedback sounds on and off. If hearing a chime, a popping bubble, or some other "cute" noise every time you did something drove you crazy, you will greatly appreciate this long overdue feature. *Speaking of unnecessary cuteness, Clippy the Paperclip is gone! Yesssssss! Cons: *All the applications startup and quit slowly on my G4 machine. Office v. X applications started and quit virtually instantaneously (yes, I realize v. X was written specifically for PowerPC processors). Saving files is slow as well. *Office 2008 uses a new file format that is not compatible with other versions of Office. If you send documents to people who are not fully up to
date, you have to save a second version or limit yourself to working with the older file format. *It's good that Microsoft no longer just ports Windows Office to the Mac. Nonetheless, there are user interface inconsistencies both within and across the applications which keep Office from feeling 100% Macintosh. *Silverlight, Microsoft's attempt to compete with Macromedia Flash, is installed by default. *No macros in Excel! Bad, bad, bad move. And no support for Visual Basic. Expression Media comments: *EM is a standalone application, not a fully integrated component of Office. Installation and activation is a separate process from installing Office and requires entering a second product key. *Mac Office ships with EM 1. 0 . Users must manually download EM 2. 0 from the Microsoft website after installing the earlier version. This is inconvenient but not a gigantic obstacle if you have a fast Internet connection. *EM is a good tool for managing projects that use data from many sources. For example, somebody putting together a presentation that includes text from Word, numbers from Excel, slides from PowerPoint, music from MP3's, and images from digital photographs can organize all the necessary files in one EM "catalog. " All the source material for the presentation is then viewable in one place. *EM doesn't create new copies of documents, thankfully, but its catalogs can become very large. As a test, I created two catalogs with digital photographs--a 3. 5 GB set resulted in a 25. 8 MB catalog and a 1. 5GB set created a 113. 9 MB catalog. I'm not sure what accounts for this very large discrepancy but it's clear that EM isn't for people with limited hard disk space. *Home users probably will find EM to be overkill for their needs. If you just want to keep track of your music and photos, iPhoto and iTunes are more than adequate. Having said that, I'm going to use EM to manage all the e-delivery documents I receive from banks, brokers, and the like. It will be a lot easier than digging through lots of Finder folders and subdirectories. ----- Bottom line: Office 2008 doesn't hold any surprises for experienced Office users. For the most part, everything still operates in the way to which you are accustomed. If you own a PowerPC Mac and use an older version of Office, you should carefully consider whether you want to upgrade or not. T I updated to Microsoft Office 2008 from M. O. 2004 because I purchased a new, Intel-based, Leopard-running, 2. 6 GHz MacBook Pro and thought M. O. 2008 would be faster than what I had. The software has all the features of the 2004 version plus a few features I'll probably not use but I was disappointed by the amount of time it takes for the various programs to load. For instance, from the time I click on the Word icon in the dock until a blank document opens takes about 13 seconds. Word 2004 on my 1 Ghz Titanium G4 PowerBook only took about 5 seconds. Other than that, I like the fact that the applications work very much like the previous versions so there is very little required learning curve. I upgraded from Office 2004 after holding out for a long time because I was receiving XSLX spreadsheets from Windows Office 2007 that the imported could not handle. No only did Excel 2008 NOT handle those same spreadsheets, but: Entourage 2008 IMAP support broke important features that worked in Entourage 2004 (updating of non-inbox folders Word 2008 got really really slow and MS had arbitrarily moved at least one feature I used (Overwrite Mode) from a perfectly convenient place (an indicator on the status bar) to the preferences. The capper, though, was I discovered that Entourage 2008 had CORRUPTED very many of my older calendar events to have random repeats, so my calendar was filled with lies about the past. Opening the calendar on another mac in Entourage 2004 showed the correct events, opening in 2008 showed these bogus repeats. Some UPGRADE. NOT! I have returned the product for a refund, reverted to Office 2004. And, by the way, have moved my personal information management to Apple Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Starting to use iWork 09 for preference, too. Thank you Microsoft!
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