KEY POINTS:
Test-driving the new Mac:Office software package on my friend's iMac these past few days, I can't help feeling that those of us labouring away on Windows machines have been short-changed. I want Outlook to look more like the new Entourage and I prefer the slightly more conservative look
of Word. In its four years of development, subtle tweaks have given Mac:Office an edge when it comes to aesthetics. Under the hood though through there are some compromises Mac owners will have to live with in this feature-rich if pricey suite of Office tools.
WORD
First off, the annoying default setting that has Office save your documents in the Open XML format is a nuisance. Chances are that the person you're sending the document to won't be able to open it.
The ability to save to PDF is however a nice addition, but the most striking thing for Mac users will be the overall aesthetics of Word which I think looks better than on Windows. Fonts look great thanks to OpenType.
Microsoft has done a lot of work to streamline its desktop publishing so you can whip up a newsletter or report quickly and the Publishing Layout view and the Document Elements do sterling jobs here. There's a tool for making it easy to add citations, which academics will appreciate, and Mail Merge is now easier to use.
EXCEL
Again, Mac users enjoy an overall nicer look than their Windows-centric cousins. Excel has always been a solid business tool and in this latest form, constitutes the best spreadsheet tool on the Mac. The familiar ribbon bar introduced with Office 2007 for Windows lets you move quickly between templates and graph types. Excel can be daunting for casual users who just want to draw up a simple budget but the layout here is user-friendly. A formula builder tool also makes it easier to create those formulas that are crucial to making everything add up. There have been howls of outrage about Excel 2008's lack of support for Microsoft's Visual Basic programming language. People who use macros to speed up their work are left out in the cold here.
ENTOURAGE
Switching my friend over from Mail to the much more powerful Entourage was a breeze - all the contacts and emails crossed over as well as the mail and internet connection settings. Entourage is an incredibly powerful tool not just for email, but for scheduling tasks and to-do list. One of the most useful features bundled in here is Project Centre, which lets you set up a project you're working on and then automatically group emails that are associated with that project. The calendar looks nice with its subtle colour-coding and Entourage features a host of improvements for businesses running Exchange Server.
POWERPOINT
You have to admire Microsoft's Smart Art functions which let you turn bullet-pointed lists into complex diagrams in PowerPoint, the king of presentation makers. There are plenty of templates to choose from here and dynamic guides tidy up text and graphics to give your slides a uniform feel. Mac users also get some treats - the ability to view a presentation on an iPod and the ability to better control presentations using the nifty Mac remote control.
EXPRESSION MEDIA
The Expression Media multimedia toolset that collects all the photos and videos on your computer, categorises them and lets you manipulate them, doesn't add up to much for me.
A welcome addition to Mac:Office is Messenger for Mac so those with a Hotmail login can instant message Hotmail and Yahoo users. The My Day widget that floats on the desktop and reminds you of your tasks for the day didn't appeal.
All up then, not a bad reinvention of the Office stable for the modern Mac. But all that functionality won't come cheap - $899 for the full retail version - $549 for an upgrade. The special Media Edition I installed costs $1149 off the shelf or $749 for an upgrade. An attractive alternative for Mac owners is the Home and Student edition ($269) or even Apple's own iWorks 08 suite which costs $109.