Amazon.co.uk Review
Microsoft Office is even more predominant on the Mac than on the PC, with Excel and Word being the most widely used spreadsheet and word processor.
OfficeX is therefore a most important software release for Apple's new operating system,
OS X. The suite consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, an e-mail client and "digital asistant" organiser app. Although
Office X is a carbonised adaptation of
Office 2001, the programmers have really pulled out all the stops for this new release, both in terms of how it looks, and user experience. In design terms, it's hard to see where the beautiful Aqua interface of
Mac OS X ends, and
Office X starts, from the icons in the Dock, to the toolbars of the applications. There are some nice touches, such as "throbbing" buttons, which look like 3-D water droplets, translucent background windows, and the sheets, which have replaced dialogue boxes, that "slide" out and expand from the Dock. There is very little totally new functionality, although much has been done to improve the suite, and to iron out the niggles that spoiled the experience of
2001. The graphics Office can produce are vastly enhanced because Office uses
Mac OS X's Quartz engine technology. One extremely overdue feature is that the toolbars in all the applications can be stripped down to the bare essentials, even in Word, the most cluttered of all. The installation has also been cleaned up, and at last Office doesn't install extensions and control panels all over your hard drive. Running certain conflicting Classic applications while you are starting up
Office X may create some problems, but this can be avoided by operating solely in
Mac OS X. A final important development to note is that
Office X files can be shared with users of Office for PC, because the formats are now the same and are back-compatible to
Office 98. This is a worthy upgrade, essential for users of
Mac OS X, beautifully well-thought out and designed, and one that will take
Mac OS X even more into the mainstream as a viable platform. --
Alison Jardine
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