To see a Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac slide show, Click here. While this is new and users will have to figure out how to work with it, overall it will be a pretty seamless experience for customers,” she said.Īsked how compatibility would work between documents in the current Office 2004 for Mac format and the new Open XML format in the 2008 product, Lefebvre said the team had created downloadable converters for Word and PowerPoint, both of which were in beta format, with an update for Excel expected to be delivered soon. “A lot of the work we did on this release was on the file format to ensure that users had a good compatibility experience. This latest version of Office for Mac also shares the Open XML file format found in the Office 2007 System family of products. Everyone is looking for the product to deliver great compatibility,” Amanda Lefebvre, the marketing manager for Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit, told eWEEK.Ĭompatibility is important for those users who share documents across platforms, she said, noting that the product works natively on both Power PCs and Intel-based Macs and that speed has been improved across-the-board, Lefebvre said. “What we tried to achieve with Office 2008 for the Mac is to help users get their work done more simply, and compatibility was a big driver here. The team is also introducing a "technology guarantee program"-as of September 25, anyone who buys a current version of Office will get an upgrade to the 2008 equivalent for the cost of shipping and handling when the final version ships.Īs expected, Office 2008 will be available as a Universal Binary and will support the Open XML file format that Office 2007 users under Windows have been "enjoying" since the beginning of this year.Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac hits the streets January 15 after close to four years under development and a year after Microsoft released Office 2007 for the PC. The Mac BU still promises that new features will be posted "every couple of weeks" to the Office 2008 sneak peek site, and that it is aiming to have all versions of Office on shelves on January 15 in time for Macworld. It allows for three licenses for non-commercial use, and will retail for $149.95. Advertisementįinally, Home and Student Edition is the same as the full version of Office 2008, except minus the Exchange and Automator support that comes with the regular version of Entourage (if you're truly using it at home, then you probably don't need that Exchange support anyway). Special Media Edition will retail for $499.95 ($299.95 upgrade), which the Mac BU says reflects a $200 savings compared to if you were to buy the parts separately. Special Media Edition will come with all of the above, plus Microsoft Expression Media-a digital asset management suite that will help media-crazed users import, annotate, organize, archive, search, and distribute their media files. This package will go for $399.95, the same price as the current Office suite ($239.95 for an upgrade license). As expected, the core package of Office will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage sporting both support for Automator and "full" Exchange support. Officially announcing the SKUs at the Apple Expo in Paris this week, the Mac BU tells Ars that there will be three packages for Office 2008 when it's finally released: Office 2008 for Mac, Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition, and Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition. We think that Microsoft's Mac BU has taken a lesson out of Apple's iPhone PR book: "Announce something new every week about your upcoming product and stay in the news constantly!" The group has certainly done a good job of it so far, and this week's announcement brings us information on SKUs and pricing of Mac Office 2008.
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