Mac Office 2008 trial now available →
MacBU finally has a fully functional 30 day trial of Mac Office 2008 available (US only) for download:
While we decided to ship Office 2008 without a trial, and have been heads-down working on the next version of Office for the Mac, many of you rightly demanded the option of kicking the tires and trusting yourself to decide whether Office 2008 was right for you.
Finally people will know that it’s crap without having to shell out for it.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I have to disagree with “Finally people will know that it’s crap.” I switched to Macintosh in November 2008 after all these years being a loyal Windows user and before downloading a copy of Office 2008, I decided to give Pages ’09 a try. In short, I was pretty disappointed, because certain features were either missing or not easily accessible. As soon as I downloaded Word 2008 as part of Office 2008, I felt right at home. Everything was exactly where I would expect it to be and all the necessary features were easily accessible.
Hence, excluding the issue of cost, Word 2008 in my opinion is superior to Pages and Writer (from Open Office). Excel and PowerPoint is a whole different story and one’s superiority over the other is a moot point.
The point is that the entire Office 2008 suite should not be reduced to a derogatory “crap” definition, because many people do use different components of it every day and there’s clearly a market for Office.
If Office 08 Mac is as bad as Office 07 Windows, when compared to Office 04 mac and Office 03 Windows, they can keep their free download.
Whoever developed the “Ribbon” ought to be strangled with it. Some of us have many years of Office experience, and heretofore, the upgrades more or less followed form. Not so the latest Office offering.
I’ve tried the alternatives and agree, that at the end of the day, only Office has the heavy duty features needed by professionals. However, I’m staying with Office 04 on my Mac.