I know, I am late with this review, but I just recently updated to Office 2008, and I wanted to play around before I shared my thoughts with the rest of you.
Ladies and Gentlemen get strapped in as this is the longest post I have ever written.
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Word 2008
Definitely very different to Word 2004 look wise, new main toolbar, with bigger, clearer icons against a plain background. Microsoft has abandoned it’s default Times and Arial fonts in favour of new and nicer- looking typefaces called Calibri and Cambria. Default heading styles use shades of blue to produce a much more elegant, modern look.
The Gallery is the most impresive new element. Click on the button and an array of pre-designed objects appears. Documents Elements are a very interesting idea, but it’s important to understand that they are not single objects that Word inserts into your documents, They are complicated assemblies of images, text and section breaks (in the case of Cover Pages) and this can end in tears. Even ‘floating’ graphics don’t really float, since they are invisibly anchored to text.
Like Apple’s Pages 08, Word offers two editing modes, Publishing and Text. In Publishing mode, graphics stay where you put them, and in text it is contained in boxes that you can link so that it flows from one to another.
Word 2008 gives you more control over the appearance of the Notebook view. The Citations (bibliography) tools have been improved and the mail merge system has been streamlined.
Graphically, Word 2008 is much more polished but structurally there isn’t much that you can do that wasn’t possible in Word 2004.
For academic, scientific, technical and other professional authors, its an improvement. If you need equation-editing facilities, bibliography, indexing and cross-referencing and -crucially- compatibility with the rest of the academic world, Office is a given. For home home users those who work alone, though, it’s a different story. Apple’s Pages 08 is easier to understand and better at producing graphically rich layouts quickly.
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Excel 2008
New features in Excel 2008? Very few to be honest. It does benefit from the new chart tools introduced across the entire office suite. Formula AutoComplete feature, a Formula Builder tool and an increase in the number of rows and columns available. Graphics is an area in which Excel improved considerably. The graphical improvements are the most striking changes, together with the instant customisation options.
In this version you can select individual components in charts and then emphasise them using the Quick Styles and Effects panel.
Charts can be cut and pasted into Word documents, although they must still link to the original Excel data. Its a pitty that you can’t create simple, self-contatined data table in the document itself, because there’s always the worry that the files will end up separate.
The new Ledger sheet in Excel 2008 offer ready-made financial worksheets that could save accounting professionals and bookkeepers time, thought it’s important to remember that they don’t do anything that can’t be achieved manually. Auto Complete and Formula Builder, are both a great features which are designed to make functions easier to use.
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Power Point 2008
PowerPoint is the one that has seen the fewest major changes. The new drag-and-drop Gallery and the vastly improved graphics.
In PowerPoint 2004 we had five different views, but in 2008 there’s only three.
Normal view is which you create the presentation.
The Slide Sorter view it has been retained, making it even easier to drag-and-drop slide layouts from the Gallery and get a visual sense of the presentation’s appearance and structure
The Gallery view, adding transitions is simpler, as they are displayed in the Gallery. Other Gallery items include the Table Styles, Charts, SmartArt, Graphics and WordArt.
SmartArt helps to create explanatory diagrams very easily. SmartArt is organised into categories, which include List, Process, Cycle and other concepts. The Graphics can be resized and repositioned like other objects, and the text within the shapes scales automatically to fit. If you type more text than will fit in the box, it shrinks to fit. The clever part is the text in all the other boxes shrinks by the same amount, so you don’t get and ugly mixture of text sizes within your diagram.
In the Formatting Palette, there’s a SmartArt Graphics Style panel. Here you can try out different colour schemes and graphical effects, which include a dazzling range of shadows, bevels and 3D effects to add some glamour to your presentations.
To add simpler shapes, switch to Object Palette.
The photos are familiar, since Office 2008 can raid your iPhoto library for images, just like the iWork apps.
Not to forget the much-improved and overlooked WordArt tool, and the Dynamic Guides which helps to line up objects on your sides. Slide shows can be saved to iPhoto, from there to an iPod, and you can control your presentations using your Mac’s remote.
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Entourage 2008
Entourage is the odd one out in the Mac Office suite for numerous reasons. All the other applications have a direct equivalent on Windows, and with Office 2008, there’s direct open XML file compatibility between them as well. Entourage is quite different to Outlook in Windows, even though they supposedly do the same tasks - handling emails, your calendar and your to-dos - Entourage though adds project management to the list, making it one up on it Windows counterpart.
Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book all do a very good job and often neatly integrated with third-party applications, notably the iWork apps. you will need a really good reason to migrate. You wont be running two email applications, you can’t maintain two calendars and no-one will maintain two contacts lists (specially when maintaining one is demanding). Entourage can import all your email messages and mailboxes directly from Apple Mail, as well as all your email account details.
The biggest new feature must be the companion applet My Day. It sits on the screen showing you your appointments and tasks for the current day. You can add new To Dos to the panel at the bottom, unfortunately though you can’t add or even modify the events displayed at the top. Hopefully they will iron that out some time soon.
It is very strong on project management and collaboration tools, and you can use it to plan, manage and keep track of nearly every possible aspect of a project down to the finest of details. For home users it is to much of a step learning curve to get used to it, since all the tools found here are already available on your Mac.
Last words
Office 2008 is faster then it’s previous predecessor 2004 due to it running natively on Intel processors, it has improved graphics, with simpler and more intuitive interface.
Is it worth the money? That depends on what you will use it for. If you are a home user, or a freelancer and you have Office 2004, then I wouldn’t advice you paying for an upgrade since it’s cheaper to get iWork 08, but if you frequently use Office with the extra power that it hides under it’s bonnet, then you will be in for a treat.
For all those interested in a good detailed guide into all the new feature and getting down and dirty with them, you can always pick this
Enjoy and let us know your thoughts, it’s over to you, so what you saying… 
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