And you know it doesn't support unicode, still interested?

@ Yazdgerd: Is Unicode support really a make-or-break feature? It's the industry standard, everyone uses it, but hey, no Unicode so forget it? Rrrrrrrreally?

You do realize that it can't run windows macros anymore, and that if you want to use macros then you have to rewrite them all in AppleScript, which won't work on the windows machines. My advice, use iWork, Google Docs & Spreadsheets (hopefully Safari support comes soon, and really it does everything most people need for free), or use Office running off a VM in Parallels or Fusion. Personally, I'll stick to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Board up the windows, Microsoft! Kevin Rye isn't giving you another penny!

Sounds like you need a real IT staff at work. I can't remember the last time I have had a problem like that with MS Office. But, like you said there are other options and if they work for you that is great.

Amen!

Yup - the current promotion provides either a free copy of Office 2008 Student Teacher Edition (which provides 3 computer licenses) or a free upgrade to the Office 2008 Special Media Edition (only one license), you pay only shipping and handling. Any version of Office 2004 purchased within the time period specified on the rebate form (I don't have mine near me to check the specifics) qualifies -- including upgrade editions, student teacher editions, etc.

This isn't a traditional "upgrade" per se - they'll ship you the retail equivalent of the software (and you can choose either Student Teacher Edition or Special Media), not the typical "upgrade" media that checks to see if you have the older CD or whatever first.

Basically, Microsoft is subsidizing some of the cost or users to upgrade to 2008, in order to get those conversion/adoption numbers as high as possible and get a better installed userbase. In the long run, they think it will be more beneficial to have more people using the software early on, and thus, keeping their lead in the Mac productivity suite arena, than to get as much profit as they can off the software itself.

I bought iWork '08 because I needed Word '07 compatibility, but I'm looking forward to Office 2008. Microsoft had a day after thanksgiving $100 rebate for the student edition that will ultimately get me Office 2008 Special Media for $32 -- or $40 less than iWork '08's student price. I like Word/Excel better than Pages/Numbers anyway. I just wish Entourage had PST support (though the new Exchange server support is 1000x better).

I don't know what kind a scientific stuff you publish, but give LaTeX a try. BiBDesk is a ful featured reference manager, i use it daily for my scientific publishing (post-doc political sciences).
The stuff you produce even looks better :-)

Agreed. LaTeX isn't for everyone, but if you use it, BibDesk is absolutely fantastic as a reference manager.

It took me forever to decide to give LaTeX a real try. I only did it when I realized all I was doing in Word was applying styles, so why not do that in text? The initial learning curve to LaTeX is a challenge (you pretty much have to buy the book with the St. Bernard dog on the cover), but once it's set up it's so much more efficient than Word, and what's more, it's dependable and bulletproof. Widow/orphan control *always* works, even across new sections, multiple tables of contents and appendices aren't hit and miss like Word, it's just nice. I'm not even in an academic field that typically uses LaTeX, but it's really surprised me.

Yeah, I have LaTeX and have used it in the past. I absolutely prefer a WYSIWYG editor hands down. Journals to which I would be submitting manuscripts (ACS) provide Word templates which may (or may not) work in Pages- I haven't tried. For sure, however, they will not work with LaTeX.

My university has provided LaTeX templates (is this what they are called?) to prepare your dissertation in the past, but I am unsure if they do this anymore. The sad fact is that I am (and many others are) locked into Word because of templates, .docx attachments, etc.

Oh well, /rant off- thanks for the LaTeX suggestion. I may dig it back out and see if I can't make a go of it for my next paper...

Give iTexMac2 a try... you have to hunt around the site to find out how to download the latest version (it's not obvious), but it does have a continuous synchronization mode, where you've got a WYSIWYG representation of your document continuously updated in a window.

I personally use TexShop though. Occasionally pressing the preview button is fine with me. If you're using styles for everything (as everyone should be), WYSIWYG doesn't really give you anything extra.