Or yiou can go with OpenOffice and save even more.

Worked for me.

I am using iWork for most "office" tasks, and I have Office 2004, so I am not interested in Office 2008. However this is significant discount, is Office not selling well?

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Sir Harry Flashman wrote:
this is significant discount, is Office not selling well?

Amazon.com is already selling Office 2008 for Mac: Special Media Edition for $139, a 72% discount. Buy.com is selling it for $116!

"Can you find the applications you want on the Mac? Well, you don't really get full Microsoft Office."
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (publisher of Office:mac 2008) to PC Magazine

Office for Mac works much better than the Windows version, at least that has been my experience with Office 2004 for Mac. I just upgraded to 2008 with the purchase of a new MacBook Pro, so the jury is out. Features such as Mail Merge and labels have always been a breeze in the Mac version but a frustration in Windows.

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DanLyons wrote:
"Can you find the applications you want on the Mac? Well, you don't really get full Microsoft Office."
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (publisher of Office:mac 2008) to PC Magazine

Why pay exhorborant prices for Microsoft Office when Open Office has all the same functionality, supports Office formats, is less of a resource hog that Office, and best of all, IT'S FREE!

I don't think Open Office provides the Exchange support that I need from Microsoft Office.

2008 is terrible. PowerPoint has tab formatting issues and excel crashes my alu iMac under spreadsheets my 5 year old work PC had no problems with.

Until they fix it, they should be paying us to use it...

Yes, that has historically been the case. However, Microsoft changed that with Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for the Mac. The Windows version doesn't lose Macros support, and it's interface I think is much improved over earlier versions for Windows.

With that said, if you do not care about macros and some of the other small compatibility issues, Office 2008, especially Word, offers some nice refinements over Office 2004. Microsoft improved the layout, and the incorporation of some of the Windows' version of ribbon interface in the Mac version was well done. Personally, I wish Microsoft would have the applications look and act the same on both platforms. After all, many people are using Office for compatibility.

I have iWorks and have tried Open Office, but Office, with the exception of the far superior Keynote over Powerpoint, I think is the best all around office suite. It is pricey, but if I had to choose, I'd pay a hundred dollars for it before I paid for iWorks. I really wish Wordperfect would have stayed on the Mac. I haven't used it in a couple of years, but it was way superior to Word.

On a side note, I really think people are too hard on Microsoft for killing some feature compatibility for this version of Mac Office. Apple out of the blue told developers it was going Intel. It then made the transition in less then a year, although it originally told developers it would take two years. Large companies like Microsoft were already well on their way into their development cycles when this announcement was made. They had to all the sudden stop what they were doing and make their applications Universal. That might not have been so bad, but many large developers were using feature complete Code Weaver. Now they had to change to Apple's developer tools, which are nice, but weren't as well developed in terms of features at the time. So, developers 1) had to change their plans in mid development cycle, and 2) change their tools to less capable ones. Not easy if you all the sudden have to rewrite millions of lines of Code.

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mjkphoto wrote:
Office for Mac works much better than the Windows version, at least that has been my experience with Office 2004 for Mac. I just upgraded to 2008 with the purchase of a new MacBook Pro, so the jury is out. Features such as Mail Merge and labels have always been a breeze in the Mac version but a frustration in Windows.

Entourage is critical in a corporate environment. That's the real reason to have Office IMHO.

I've installed this on an iMac in the office to see how it copes as an alternative to MS Office and i can say that I do not miss anything. It never crashes with thw work i do and i have database style excel files with many tabbed sheets interlinked. I have documents that I combine and compare which are 300-500pages long and it copes. At home MS Offcie that I have been using has crashed at every sitting at least once. The verdict is OO is free MSO is crap. and for anythign that requires more extensive layouting, iWork is incredible and exceptionally fast to use to get a good looking document.

Exchange within Crossover should do the trick instead of entourage and you get to use the same confusing illogical frustrating bloated exchange that you would on windows. ( After years of using Exchange Istill cannot remember where to find most settings and why they change without my doing!)... And you dont have to deal with the gaudy in your face My Day pallette which hogs resources.