Others say...

"It's a TROJAN horse with criminal intent"
Having this product (if one can call this terrible horror-show a product) already installed on my new iMac caused it to crash / freeze every 5-10 minutes. It took me a couple of hours to understand the issue is not the iMac but this trojan horse called Office 2008 for Mac.
Uninstalled it - and there went all my problems, the famous beach ball (blue screen of death for macs) and the like.
I wonder when will one of the Microsofties come out of their holes and let the public know the truth: that they are selling products for macs with a criminal intent - to crash them....What other explanation could be true ? Not enough testing ? Oh, come on....
If I could give this terrible thing only ZERO stars...

"If you want your boss to laugh at your work, then use this "product!""
This one's unreliable and buggy. I have had spacing problems when Windows Microsoft Office 2007 users open my documents. In my opinion, it's lame, just like Windows Vista!



"Worst Microsoft product ever."
I gave this one star because Amazon does not let you give zero.

Can a product be so bad I will uninstall and go back to the clunky buggy Mac Office 2004? I think so. Also, do not do what I did and let the installation program convince you to remove all prior versions: now I not only have to go back and reinstall the old program, but all updates too.

2008 was supposed to be faster and fix all the bugs from 2004. And I believed them. It fixed one print bug and added many new bugs. One delightful one: parts of text disappear in normal and preview, but reappear when you highlight the section. It seems that the text is there, you just can't see it. Plus, print view is screwed up. They arbitrarily reassigned the locations of several menu items, usually moving to another area and then to a new submenu. LOTS of new submenus. Stunningly, they no longer found space for RECENT in the main FILE menu, Now, to find your list of recent documents, you have to do to the FIle menu, then to a new submenu for recent documents.

Oh, and it is slower than ever, Universal Binary code notwithstanding.

Apart from the bugs and clunkiness, it seems that every single change they made makes the program less suitable to the way I use a word processing program. If my clients did not use MS, I would go to Mac "Pages" and never look back.

I won't even comment on the problems of going back and forth between the .doc format and the new .docx format. I am sure others have addressed that joy.

One amusing note. Initially they arbitrarily replaced the toolbar icon for "Save as" to a new, stupid icon with a stylized MS "O" for office. Apparently I was not the only one who hated this: one of the two (so far) massive "updates" changed the icon back to "Save as"

"Thank you!"
Since I didn't have Microsoft Office software, I often sufferd from writing/turning in reports. This is very useful, and I'm happy with it now. Thank you!

"Only for those forced to use Exchange"
As most of the other reviewers have written, this product is not worth buying. I got a free copy as I went to the product launch, and was soon incensed that Microsoft could sell this with a straight face.

Let's look at the listed "product features" one by one:
1. Streamlined user interface runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs
- Streamlined is an interesting word to use. I never had the displeasure of using Office for Mac 2004 on my Intel Mac, but from all reports it ran terribly. I shudder to think that this edition is supposedly running better. The Office applications are without a doubt the slowest applications running on my Mac, and this includes Parallels which allows me to run Windows in a virtual machine. The idea that this is "streamlined" is laughable.

2. Open XML file formats, the Office Art graphics engine, and other features that result in compatibility and file fidelity
- This is probably the main reason new-comers would buy Office, for compatibility with Office for Windows users. However, the compatibility is full of problems. Do not spend any time working on layout for your Word documents if you're then sending them to a Windows user; the layout will be completely ruined and you'll have to do it all again. I also have Office for Windows running through Parallels, and I usually end up using that if I hope to share my documents. Office for Mac just doesn't do it properly. Keep in mind that Apple's Pages can read docx (some say better than Word for Mac does), although it can't write back to docx.

3. Professional design is within your power with hundreds of new customizable templates and suite-wide themes, SmartArt graphics, and the new Publishing Layout View in Word 2008
- This is all well and good but if you wanted great templates and layout capabilities, you would buy iWork for a quarter of the price... which is certainly my recommendation. Did I mention the layout capabilities don't work reliably anyway?

4. My Day keeps you connected to all of the day's action. Command your calendar, tackle your tasks, and simplify your day
- If you own a Mac you have iCal. Why would this be a selling point to anyone?

5. Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, Microsoft Server Exchange Support
- And therein lies perhaps the main reason Office for Mac will still be purchase even though it is greatly inferior to competing products: Microsoft Server Exchange Support. Apparently much of the world runs on this these days. Let's be thankful that Google and SalesForce are teaming up to take it down once and for all...

So in summary, the real reasons to buy this product are as follows:
1. You are forced to require Microsoft Server Exchange Support.
Err... I put a number 1 because I thought there would be more but there actually isn't. Compatibility with Windows users is important, but Office for Mac just doesn't deliver here. Personally I would buy iWork - did I mention it is a quarter of the price for an equivalent product? Microsoft Office for Mac is a typical half-hearted, over-priced attempt from Microsoft, but no one can deny that their propaganda will make it a best-seller.