I will share my views about Microsoft Office 2008 (good for most parts, except graphs in Powerpoint) in detail later. This post is to discuss about the major change that has happened between Office 2004 and Office 2008 with regard to Entourage (the Outlook equivalent email application), particularly if you use it to access your office Exchange mail.
Like me, if you don't want to spend almost twice as much for the Office Standard Edition Upgrade ($240) as the Home&Student Edition ($130), you will be in a bind. Entourage 2008 in the Home edition does not support Microsoft Exchange Server; you can only use it as a regular mail client for POP3 and IMAP access. This is a major let-down from the 2004 version where even the Home edition Entourage supports Exchange.
So what do you do:
The improvements in other Office apps (Word & Powerpoint mostly) are so major that investing in Office 2008 is a no-brainer. However, installing Entourage 2008 is meaningless (the native Mail app can offer those capabilities). So, I have now both versions of Office running on my Mac: 2008 for Word, Powerpoint and Excel, and 2004 for Entourage. This can be achieved by not opting for the standard installation procedure but by excluding Entourage in the 2008 installation and 2004 uninstallation activities.
In any case, this is a temporary fix. Come September, with Snow Leopard, we will have Exchange support built in to the Mail, iCal and Address Book apps on the Mac... so hopefully, goodbye Entourage!!!
For many people who use Exchange at work, their corporation takes part in Microsoft's Home Use Program. This program allows you to purchase Microsoft products, including Office:2008 Standard Edition, at reduced prices. You might want to check to see if your employer takes part in it so that you can use Entourage 2008. We made major improvements to Entourage's support for Exchange in 2008, and continue to add Exchange support through updates.
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