PowerPoint 2008 integration with Apple Remote Control lets you concentrate on your words, not your keyboard. Now control your presentation and engage your audience unleashed from the podium.
Excel 2008
It’s a numbers game. With Excel 2008, analyze, share, and manage your data, and easily create persuasive charts and thought-provoking graphs for powerful results.
- Ledger Sheets in Excel 2008 make tracking finances, inventories, even invoices and portfolios easy with preformulated spreadsheets and automatic calculations.
- Charting improvements artfully convey the message your data is telling. You’ll see your numbers in a whole new way.
- The new prebuilt functions tackle the most common tasks and make creating error-free complex conditional formulas easier.
- Quick access to formulas makes functions more functional with Formula Builder in Excel 2008.
- Your data will know virtually no limits. Excel 2008 now supports over 16,000 columns and over 1 million rows.
- Whether you’re an Excel expert or a complete novice, Excel 2008 Formula AutoComplete simplifies your calculations by providing a dynamic pop-up menu so you can select and complete your formula.
Messenger for Mac
Convenience is the name of the game for Mac users who want to communicate instantly with family, friends and colleagues from one convenient place. Messenger for Mac is now a Universal application, and gives you more ways to share what’s on your mind or on your plate.
Use Messenger for Mac to instantly check the status of project team members, streamline workflow by sending documents directly from Word, or offer questions or comments on document changes instantly.
- Yahoo! Interoperability will allow personal users to connect and message with Yahoo! Messenger for Mac users.
- Your intentions will never again be in doubt when you create your own custom emoticons in Messenger for Mac.
- Spelling Checker is now included in Messenger for Mac.
- Let the world know your tastes when you display your iTunes selection with the new “What I’m listening to now” feature.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Buggy
I wanted to like this, I really did. The only reason that I use Microsoft is to be compatible with the files that other users are sending me who are already on this version. But I have to say, this is not an improvement as it introduces more bugs and problems that its worth. When I work with people I suggest that the try to use an older version on their Windows computer and I still use the older version myself. If you are looking to buy a package for the first time and you don’t need Excel’s advanced features, iWork is the way to go. If you do need advanced Excel, then getting VMware Fusion, a copy of Windows operating system, and the Windows version of Excel is the way to go (pricey as it is).
5 Stars A Better Office Suite
As I unpacked my new Macbook Pro, the enclosed iLife was a killer does-all addition to a stellar Apple laptop. I loaded the new MS Office with glee. Microsoft runs fast, and flawlessly on the laptop, unlike the chuggy versions (aside from Word) of the Apple past. The funky docX save feature is a bugger: save a doc in docX and it’ll be tough for most earlier Macs to open, but just upgrade: word is now a strong contender for very good layouts that, until now, I’d thought was beyond Microsoft. for a Quark/InDesigner like me, here is the MS version for newsletters and business use that really looks terrific and is easy to use. Plus, I’m a returning student, so using the school’s recommended Word is the correct approach.
Entourage and the rest included and a recommended alternative to, ahem, the other options for email and online communicating. Faster, no baloney: SWEET.
Excel is the standard for spreadsheets: Much as I adore other apps that come close, stick with Excel and it’ll always work best.
Well done, MS! I’m happy and working without fear of problems!
4 Stars Probably not perfect, but the bottom line is it works…
I have installed MS Office 2008 on my iMac and the installation went smoothly and effortlessly. The programs I use most are Word, Powerpoint and Excel. I use these programs on my iMac when I don’t want to use the Dell laptop my employer has given me. I use only the fairly basic functionality with Excel and Word and Powerpoint, although as Bill Gates would say, “Do you open spreadsheets from more advanced users? (Yes) Then you are using advanced functionality!” and have had no problems reading anything or creating anything. Many of the below reviewers have complained about more advanced functionality that may be missing or things they may be able to do, which I am sure are all valid, but if you are using it mostly to open things others have created and use the basics of Word, Powerpoint and Excel than you will have no problem.
1 Star Possibly the worst product ever released by Microsoft
Blind untrained chimps could write a better software application for the Mac. Having used Microsoft Office on both PCs and Macs for as long as it has existed, I am amazed that this product could actually be released by any software development organization. It is unbelievably slow, even on an Intel CoreDuo Mac with 2GB of RAM. As an example: copying 25 cells from Excel and pasting (as unformatted text!) into MS-Word takes 45 seconds to a minute. During that time the Mac “beach ball of death” comes up and the entire system becomes unresponsive. Music stops playing, your skype call is dropped, etc… Formatting a line in Word can reformat the entire document. Word crashes quite frequently, often with the beach ball of death and a system so hung that I can’t even get to the “Force Quit” menu for minutes. (In fact I usually keep a terminal window open just for the purpose of doing “kill -9″ on the MS-Word process. Excel is not as bad but like many other reviewers have noted, it’s missing many features of the Windows version. Powerpoint is mediocre. It crashes frequently and formatting is often broken when transferring files to the Windows version. Entourage? Completely useless compared to Apple’s built-in mail client and a pale shadow of Outlook on Windows.
I use MS-Office because my company is 95% Windows but on the Mac it’s a misery-inducing experience. Give me Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a Mac, and a copy of MS-Office and I will find out where Osama Bin Laden is stat!
5 Stars Office the mac way….
Installation on a macbook 2.4 was seamless. It was quick and easy. No more using bootcamp to use microsoft office. Since it is a microsoft product the programs take a while to load up compared to any program in iwork from apple. I prefer iwork but the rest of the world is still catching up and they prefer microsoft office. Great product if you need to use it instead of iwork.
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