Microsoft Tells Details of Office 2008 for Mac

Microsoft has announced pricing and availability of its latest Mac-compatible version of its Office suite of business tools.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is available from January 15 for £350 (US$685), including VAT, for the Standard Edition. A Home and Student Edition of Office 2008 for Mac costs $193.

Microsoft clams that Office 2008 for Mac is "more powerful and easier to use," including a simplified new user interface and new tools such as Document Elements.

Office 2008 for Mac uses the same Open XML file formats, Office Art graphics engine, and other features as the Windows-based Office 2007. There are also "hundreds" of new customizable templates and suite-wide themes.

Word 2008 features a Publishing Layout View workspace that lets users create "incredibly rich documents" such as newsletters and brochures "without a degree in design."

Excel 2008 has "vastly improved" charting capabilities to help users create and manipulate charts and graphs "easier than ever before."

PowerPoint 2008 includes SmartArt graphics that "let you bring a blank slide to life with stunning charts, maps, and diagrams at the click of a button."

Email client Entourage 2008 is "the hub of Office 2008," and features My Day to keep the user connected with schedules, tasks, and priorities in a clear, stand-alone interface. Project Center helps users keep their project details under control.

Office 2008 for Mac requires Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later, a PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel Core duo processor, 512MB of RAM and 1.5GB free hard-disk space.

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Expect SP1 on 11th Dec : 2007 Office System

Next Tuesday, December 11th 2007, the Office System team here at Microsoft expects to announce the availability for download of the 2007 Microsoft® Office System Service Pack 1 (SP1). This is sooner than previously announced for the "release to web" when the target date was announced at the IT Forum in Europe earlier this year!

The 2007 Microsoft® Office System Service Pack 1 (SP1) reflects unceasing efforts by the Microsoft Office System team to address customer concerns. Nearly all of the improvements included in the 2007 Office System SP1 are in response to direct feedback from power users at large organizations or indirect feedback from home and office users through the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system.

By tapping these extensive customer-feedback channels, the Microsoft Office System team has targeted the issues that customers care about most. As a result, the 2007 Office System SP1 will deliver significant stability and performance improvements to the applications that home and office workers rely on every day.

The 2007 Office System SP1 will be critical service pack for a variety of reasons. It will eliminate many deployment barriers to deployment you may have in your environment, it will provide support for Windows Server 2008, and will provide critical fixes to products such as Project and Project Server.

The use of Automatic Update (AU) Deployment has been a concern we have heard from many customers in recent months. Because of this, the 2007 Office System SP1 will not be released to AU immediately. Instead, the Microsoft Office System team will provide guidance as to a date at which we will begin throttling up so that you have time to educate yourself on what is in SP1 and determine the best method for you to deploy it in your environment.

For more information, refer to the Office download site at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/default.aspx

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