Review by FLYingG0D

I have been waiting for the new update of the Mac version of Office. I have tried other alternatives, and they just don’t work the way I would expect them to. Having used Microsoft Office for the PC in the past for all of my office needs, I could not find anything that worked quite the same on my Mac. Printing would be off, or text would not look right, and just a lot of small things that made me feel that I needed to keep looking for the right program to edit spreadsheets and documents on my Mac.

Behold: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac! This is the newest version of Office for the mac! The settings and options I am used to having are all there! Commands have the same name I am familiar with! Documents and text look the way I would expect them to when I create/edit them and even when I print them! I felt at home!nnThe menu system does take a bit of getting used to. Instead of being a traditional Menu Bar like Office 2003 (what I am familiar with) it has a style more like Office 2007 - but with the menus detached from the main document window. This takes a little getting used to, but actually is much better with my wide screen monitor. I still prefer the old Office 2003 style menus, but I would say these are a bit more useful then the ones present in Office 2007. Also, the update system can be annoying if you set it to always check for updates. I get a pop-up window every time, but would have preferred if it checked in the background and then just let me know when new updates were available.

Installation took a bit. Not too terribly slow, but it was a bit time consuming. All of this was well worth it though, as any Office program I run starts up very fast! I was impressed with the loading speeds. I expected fairly fast loading due to the major efforts put into the new Microsoft products to decrease loading times, but I still expected it to take a bit longer. Word or Excel load about as fast as Firefox or any other lean program! MUCH faster than an alternative I had been using previously.

After using alternatives, and having become accustomed to the PC version - I found Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac to be a wonderful and necessary software suite for all of my document needs. I would definitely recommend this program if you want a solid and fully featured Office program for your Mac!