Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ideal for creating windows compatible documents..., 11 Nov 2008
I am by no means a computer genius but talking from a novice point of view I have to say that after purchasing this product 3 months ago I have been perfectly happy with it. I previously had the office 2004 for MAC which admittedly was perhaps a little more user friendly and generally straight forward, but decided to upgrade to the new Office 2008 when I purchased a new iMac.
I generally only use Word and Excel, occasionally Powerpoint, and they serve the purpose that they are there for. After a little bit of getting used to, I've figured most things out, although creating web pages with the Word is not as simple as it was with 2004, and would happily recommend it to a friend. I am currently using it with Leopard operating system.
If you simply want to be able to create Windows compatible documents then this pack should give you everything you need. I use mine for writing word documents and creating spreadsheets and transferring these between my Windows based PC at work and my iMac at home. For this everything serves the purpose well.
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117 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Migrating from Windows? Treat Office 2008 with caution., 17 Jan 2008
After years with PCs, I finally migrated to the Mac this Christmas. The whole experience has been remarkably painless. Everything worked, the software is for the most part beautifully designed, and I felt I had found a comfortable new home. Then I got Office 2008 Home and Student Edition, principally for Word and Entourage, so I could access all my Office 2007 files...and found myself back in the Windows world.
Word 2008 looks pretty, but is flaky. It sometimes freezes, and there's an odd problem with the document window sometimes refusing to overlay other windows that are open on the desktop. Also, the interface is different from Office 2003 and 2007, and in my opinion not as good.
Maybe I'll get used to these foibles, but the instability of the software is worrying. Worse, Office 2008 isn't fully compatible with Office 2007. Word will read documents written using earlier versions. But Entourage does not read Outlook pst files AT ALL. Migrating Outlook to Entourage is awkward to impossible without making big compromises and wasting lots of time and effort. Microsoft created an add-on for Entourage 2004 that apparently works with Outlook 2001 pst files, but there's no information from Microsoft on converting Outlook 2003 or 2007 files. There are other solutions for converting pst files, but I can find none that are simple and seamless (or free). And once they're in Entourage format, I notice that there's no way of exporting them to other email programs.
To add to the sense of a fundamental misfit between Microsoft and Apple, Microsoft's support pages for mac don't seem to work with Safari (but do with Firefox). In retrospect, I wish I hadn't tried this half-way house between the Windows and Mac worlds, but just started afresh.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good value for key software, 27 Jan 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I've been using MS Office programs for years having migrated from WordPerfect on a PC to Word,Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint on PC's over the last 10 years. A couple of years ago I switched to Macs and moved to what was then Office 2004. I found the move from PC to Mac versions largely seamless with the exception of Entourage - the Office Mac replacement for Outlook. I'm not sure why there is not just a Mac version of Outlook as with the other Office packages. I didn't get on with Entourage and used - and still do - the Mail package that comes as standard with Macs. I find that this has better functionality than Entourage.
It was irritating that when Office 2007 for Windows was released Mac users had to wait for a 2008 version. I found the upgrade pain free and have not experienced stability problems with Excel, Word or PowerPoint. I'm a heavy Word and PowerPoint user and they both work fine. importantly Office 2008 allows DOCX file saving which is compatible with Word 2007 on PCs - something that's important as I share Word documents with colleagues and in the last days of Mac Word 2004 DOCX files were unreadable.
This incarnation of Office is very good value for the products you get. I know Apple produce their own 'office' software which can be cheaper - and with full versions of both Office 2008 and the Apple equivalent a significant price difference. I don't fancy learning new software however and updating to Office 2008 seems a sensible move.
Whether a current Office 2004 user should migrate to 2008 is a good question. If you're not sharing DOCX files it's probably not worthwhile. How much more can PowerPoint or Word actually do that's of value - not much I think. Plus the upgrade will require more hard disk space and a more powerful processor to maintain the same speed as 2004.
I summary, for me the Excel, Word and PowerPoint are essential and will probably be for people who have used PCs in the past and are moving to Mac. If you're moving now get 2008. If you have 2004 I'd probably retain it.
Finally, I've notice interface differences between Mac and PC versions which are not entirely helpful if, like me, you have to use PCs as well.
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