Office 2008 is definitely an improvement over the creaky 4-year-old version still on sale today. But sadly, I think the MacBU was a little too late for me, and my heart belongs to iWork...

Ok, I haven't actually bought iWork '08, but to me, it looks like a very good substitute for Office, at half the price!

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Wow...spendy.

Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac: $399.95
Microsoft Office for the Mac Home and Student Edition: $149.95
Microsoft Office for Mac Special Media Edition: $499.95

Getting all of that productivity via torrents: priceless

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As for the languages, are these localizations? Or will they be selling separate versions for each language?

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Those prices are absolutely outrageous. This is why Microsoft has such a bad reputation for not caring about their customers at all. This is why I am now totally against Microsoft and their products. (Except for Xbox)

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could some one fill me on what is new in this version of office?

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@ mlewis,
these are more 'Mac-like' and are universal. Office '04 is a powerpc application and requires rosetta for intel macs, so it runs slower. office 08 is also similar to office 07 for windows, it supports the ooxml based documents and includes new...stuff...too..
w/e my college is gonna buy this for me so i dont really care. its free ftw!

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iWork '08, ultimate edition: $79

Seriously, I think this will be the worst-selling version of MS Office for Mac ever, and Microsoft is going to really have to lower their prices without lowering their standards, for once.

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Ouch. Your employer decided to go with Exchange for email/contacts/calendar management, and that's gonna cost you an extra 90 bucks, eh? Bet you're bummin'.

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With out a doubt iWork '08 is more efficient and usable than Office, and it's what? Four times cheaper?

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Well, I suppose it was inevitable that they'd do something to differentiate between the student and regular versions, as I and pretty much everyone else I know just bought the student versions of everything.

At least my home computer still runs Office v.X pretty decently. I guess I'll have to pony up the $400 when I need exchange support.

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When I upgraded to an Intel Mac, I waited and waited for this...... and then eventually downloaded NeoOffice. NeoOffice does everything I need to do for free. The Home / Student Edition of MS Office sounds like it's designed for (relatively) basic stuff that NeoOffice can do for $150 cheaper.

And it has (experimental at this stage) support for the new Office XML formats.

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Luckily, I can get this through my school for $80.
I'm not sure which version it will be (I assume the Home and Student Edition), but it will be cheaper nonetheless!

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While the price is similar to 04 its still way to much - especially for students. And Its nearly twice as much as the retail version of iWork or more than 2x the edu version which is $70. With an iWork NeoOffice combo its hard to pay for word.

Note: I own Office 2004 becuase my dad got it for $20 through his work - and honestly I'd never pay $150 for it. Though $20 -$40 is worth the templates and such.

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With these prices being so high, do you think MS is deliberately pricing themselves out of this market so that they can kill the Mac BU? Apple has worked hard to develop a viable Office alternative, as has the open source community, Google, and other vendors. With iWork, OpenOffice, Google Apps, Zoho, and other suites getting serious play from the Mac community might Microsoft decide to take its cards and leave the game? That would allow for them to focus all of their money and labor on the Windows/Web market and not have to support a whole different code and user base.

I dunno, here - I was just thinking that this high pricing could kill sales, which would then give MS cover for backing out of the Mac market - they'd then be able to quit supporting one of their competitor's top sales lines ("Switch to the Mac! Your Office documents will work just fine!") and focus all of their efforts on the Windows/Web market.

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MS is entirely too late with this one... I won't spend that kind of money on this. NeoOffice does the job for most of what I need. I own iWork '08, and while it is great in some respects (Keynote, Pages), though Numbers is very "1.0" and needs some updates (especially in terms of performance). I'm done paying the MS tax.

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I mean honestly, how do they expect to sell this again?

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well, there is always gonna be a small slice of customers who want office on their mac (ie small business, education, professional) and want a stable platform to perform documents, slideshows and tables. iwork is a good altnerative, but its relatively new, and doesn't include alot of features that office has established. like steve jobs said, "its the productivity suite for the rest of us" . yeah, i know microsoft is slowly killing MacBU, but at least there...oh forget it, i dont care defending this right now.

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Looking at the videos it looks really good. I would prefer this above the Windows version any day.. At my office I stick to WinXP with Office 2003. I have tried the newer version of both products, maybe I'm getting old or something, but they are not for me (yet).

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Do we know when it is coming out?

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Think the Ultimate Steal promotion for students will be available for the new Mac Office?

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