A 'Home and Student Edition' ($149.95 list no special upgrade price) omits Microsoft Exchange support for Entourage and also omits the OS X Automator actions for workflows, which are included in the standard version. Office 2008 ($399.95 list $239.95 upgrade) comprises Mac versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, along with the Entourage program, which does much of what Outlook does for Windows Office users. And, especially if you're an advanced user, you might consider sitting out this version entirely.

If you've been impatient to upgrade, I think you'd be wise to wait, at least until Microsoft releases one or two bug-fixing updates. Office 2008 will be released for sale on January 15, and I'm sorry to report that in my first few days of testing the final code, I found a mixed bag of improvements, incompatibilities, and bugs. Anyone with a new Intel-based Mac has been eager for a version of Office that can run natively-and at top speed-on this new, powerful platform.

Among Mac users, Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac is probably the most-widely awaited software release of the year, partly because Office is the most powerful and most widely compatible application suite available for OS X and partly because all previous versions were written for the old PowerPC platform.

Office 2008 for mac updates