For media-savvy Mac users and professionals working with libraries of images, video, music, and digital assets, the reinvented Office 2008 for Mac experience with Expression Media achieve simple life digital asset management.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: nice software
Comment: I really like the new Word desktop publishing software and have had absolutely no problems using it on my Mac. I write a lot, so I have really exercized that package. I used the docx format and like the new image manipulation features, although I may have to convert to doc or pdf format to share with others. It also handled my old doc format documents gracefully. It was a good investment for a lightning deal. The package includes other software, like Excel, which is always good to have, but I can't say that I have tried any of the software beyond Word. The only complaint I have so far is that the update that I needed to take after installing the software was huge and even timed out on my first attempt. Thank goodness I have a broadband connection, or I would have had to order the update on a CD. That tells me that they released the software with inadequate testing.
Customer Rating: Summary: Everything you hate form Microsoft is here. And what you love too.
Comment: Usefull if you have to connect to Exchange. Anoying (know) bug with the Toolbox and Space. No "visual basic", so NO MACRO in Excel.
Customer Rating: Summary: Some nice features, though not the graphics bonanza I'd hoped for.
Comment: When I recently bought a new Intel-chip Mac, I was disappointed to find that my old software -- including Photoshop -- no longer worked with the new hardware. Darn. I also needed the get Microsoft Office (ugh) and when I heard about this new "special media" edition, I hoped that it would have a graphics program to replace what I'd lost. Unfortunately, the "media" features are mainly organizing tools -- set up a fancy photo album! manage your video content! -- which pretty much mimics the media management tools that a new Mac already has on it. Oh, well. But the package also includes your basic Office suite, which solves my Word problem. I'm delving into the media tools a little bit, but I'm hesitant to switch over from the Apple applications I already have -- they work just fine, and I'm not sure how much of the Microsoft stuff I actually need. The best news is that Clippy the Paperclip is dead... yaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!!!
Customer Rating: Summary: Good Digital Asset Management
Comment: I think the reviews here have more than covered the pros and cons of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac... Personally, I'm frustrated with it as it seems to crash and then not relaunch quite a bit (currently looking for a patch)...But it is a necessary evil for me.... I do keep apple's "pages" and "numbers" on deck as a backup though...
Installation was much quicker than my last Mac Office install (student and home edition) a few months ago (for the sake of comparison I did remove that version before installing this one)...
Expression Media is extremely useful for digital asset management. It allows quite an extensive amount of customization, tagging, and multiple libraries and works with almost all file formats (docs, pdf, jpg, etc)...For me this is useful as I am a digital asset packrat. A year ago I switched from windows XP back to Mac...I wound up transferring all of the date from my XP to my mac...But I never got around to sorting through it... Expression Media is allowing me to organize that info into useful libraries and groups and tag quickly and effectively. Sure, I could do this the old fashioned way (I used to have a million folders for organizing my digital assets...not very efficient in the least) but this way is much cleaner, prettier, and more efficient...
The real plus with this sort of asset management, in this presentation, is the ability to communicate. It's much easier to locate and send the correct information to a recipient via email, and track the distribution...It also has basic photo editing built in...I cannot foresee disposing of iphoto (it's easy)- but importation is easy... I do not think thought I will use it for that but for documents, screenshots, pdfs and all of the information I have that almost suffocates me, this will be an invaluable tool...
My one concern, of course, is with the rest of the package constantly crashing and not being able to relaunch the software...
Off to see if there is a new update or patch....
Customer Rating: Summary: Good, but not as good as the Windows version.
Comment: I like MS Office. It's a nice all-in-one package for everything you'd need in office software, and this edition even has the media management that comes in handy for the modern office. It's always fairly intuitive and let's face it: It's the standard. If you get documents in your office, they're in Word, Excel, or other MS Office formats. You kind of have to have this program suite these days.
I'm impressed with the 2008 version for Mac. MS has been pretty decent in their support of the Mac, which is interesting considering there's supposed to be this big rivalry between Apple and MS. I don't think the rivalry is as powerful as some would have you believe, because every MS product I've ever used for my Mac has been top-notch, and the same applies for MS Office 2008.
Now, while it is everything I'd expect Office to be, it does have some areas where it's obvious MS "held back" a little and made their Windows version more complete and polished. Does that take away from the product's usefulness? No, not really, unless you're a hardcore MS Office user. If you are, you might want to use the Windows version instead, either in Boot Camp, or via VMWare Fusion. You'll get a slightly better, more standardized experience.
A positive for this Mac version, though. Several updates came along after this was released, and those updates are free to those who purchase the 2008 edition. These aren't just patches, but new versions of software, and I thought it was pretty nice of MS to make that upgrade path so easy and available to the Mac users.
What more can I say? It's MS Office! You either need it, or you can get by using OS X native software for these functions. If you need it, there's just no substitute.
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