Rating: 
Summary: Great upgrade...
Review: This is a worthy upgrade. As usual, all components mesh nicely with each other and are on par with the Window's counterparts. Actually, PowerPoint actually has more transitions and export options on the Mac version. A worthy upgrade.
Rating: 
Summary: MacOffice v.X for the Office proffessional
Review: This version is much better than the PC version of Office 97 I was avoiding when I still used my IBM. Because of the Mac/Aqua interface, the menu and tool bars are much slimmer and don't feel claustrophobic the way the PC versions often do. Office X also has an all-in-one formatting palette that can be collapsed or hidden, and editing and creating toolbars is easier than in the PC versions of Office. Some of Office's other basic features are better integrated than on the PC (you only have to double-click on headers and footers to open them, it's easier to move text around, there are more text colors to choose from, etc.).
Still, Office X has its share of problems:
1. File compatibility. In an attempt to dissuade us from using rival word processors, Microsoft only allowed Word to recognize other types of Word documents in addition to the standard text file formats. This means all of my old WordPerfect and WordPro files need to be saved as Word or as Rich Text Format files (which lose some special features) on my old PC in order to be compatible with Word X. Also, you can't save Word files as recent Windows Word files, which means you have to save them as older Mac Word files and lose some features in order to read them in PC versions of Word. It is never really clear how much is lost by saving it in a particular Word format (Word 2004 supposedly has a tool for this now). PowerPoint has a similar problem--I had to try two different PowerPoint formats in order to figure out which one would be accessible on a 1997 PC version of PowerPoint.
2. Bugs. Word doesn't crash every time I use it, but certain actions give me a system message saying "Word has unexpectedly quit." I have to save frequently because I never know when a particular action--editing a chart is one of Word's favorites, as well as just finishing saving a document--will tend to make it crash. You ususally can retrieve the lost document, but it still shouldn't happen.
Edit: I've applied a number of Office X updates from Microsoft's website, and that appears to have gotten rid of most of the random crashes. If you still use Office X, DEFINITELY make sure you install the updates--they make a huge difference as far as stability is concerned.
3. Font corruption. I've been able to use fonts without problems in Photoshop and Illustrator, but when I click on the same font in Word it sometimes uses the wrong font (often the next one up/down on the list, even if I type in the font's name).
4. Slow! If you have OS 10.3 and mainly do simple word processing, you'd probably be better off using TextEdit most of the time (it has a page layout view, the system-wide spell-checker, etc.). Word takes longer to start up and sometimes lags a bit when you type, especially if you only have Apple's stock 256 MB RAM.
If you own a Mac and need to share complex documents with other computers, especially PCs, there aren't really any fully native, full-featured substitutes for Office on the Mac. As things stand right now, I'm sticking with MS Office, but that might change if another major office suite is ever ported to OS X.
Rating:
Summary: Does the job with some nice features
Review: To start with, let us accept that Office is bloatware. It is big, relatively unwieldy, and is full of features. A quick scan of the menus and cryptic toolbars almost screams "DESIGNED BY A COMMITTEE".On the other hand, this is not all bad. I use Word ALL of the time and Excel on a regular basis. I keep trying to find an alternate word processor, so I've download Nisus and iWrite and a host of other toys. Most of these are perfectly respectable word processors, but I rarely get far before I need to use something I'm used to in Word. Sometimes it is image embedding, sometimes it is an obscure cross referencing facility, and sometimes I need to build a table that spans pages and, oh, and, oh yeah, and .... Word has the BEST tables facility. I used to work with a guy called Matrix Breath, so I really got to know tables. Suddenly, I'm exporting my document in RTF and a promising application has been demoted to "toy". This is actually the upside of bloatware. It's sort of like those toolkits one always drools over in hardware stores with nine hundred ratchet bolt heads, a glistening array of extender bars, and six power grip handles, one for each arm of Siva. Normal humans never need these kits. They may buy them, use one small set of components, then lose a piece and then go out and buy a screwdriver. My plumber owns four of these, all calibrated. My auto mechanic owns six, because he needs English, metric and Alfa Romeo. The downside of bloatware is the learning curve. You really have to learn in order to use even 10% of all the features. Did you know there is an equation editor? Did you know that there is a garbage grade drawing program? Did you know that there is an almost lame, but actually useful image processing component? Word v.X can probably edit movies and burn DVDs, but if you can't get to Dungeon Level XVI, stick with iMovie and iDVD. Yes, you do have to spend your first half hour with Word disabling the "Do What You Think I Mean" features. I learned how to format a business letter back in grade school and I'll insert my own superscripting, thank you very much. Still, it is no exageration to say that Word is possibly the best piece of bloatware ever written. (EMACS is a close number two). As for Excel, it too is a fine piece of bloatware. VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet was almost lapidary. It had just enough stuff in it to sell Apple IIs. Lotus 123 started the accretion process and at some point, the planetary disk coalesced into Excel which lets you solve partial differential equations using the Karmarkar algorithm and format the result in cuneiform. It takes two extra keystrokes for hieroglyphics. I don't even use those little calculator programs anymore. I just keep Excel running - no sweat under OS X - and then, when I decide I didn't mean 2+2, but I really wanted a regression analysis, I already have my data sitting right where it can do me some good. As for Powerpoint. I haven't used it in years. Yes, so I'm a mutant. Mutants are IN nowadays. Ask Hugh Jackman or Anna Paquin. My niece wanted to make a birthday card and she accidentally started up Powerpoint. Well, it has mutated. You can do collage animation, it supports sound, video, programmatic sequencing and even some lame user interaction. It's no threat to Macromedia, but these features are such time sinks that we might be spared a few bullet slides. As with everything else in the Office suite, its accumulators crackle with barely restrained power. (Any Doc Smith or IBM 1130 fans out there?) So, if you are a normal human. Try getting a normal human office suite. Appleworks is just fine. If you need more, more, more, then you should break down and go for Office. It definitely has more, more, more, just like Bill Gates. As a bonus, the Macintosh version and Windows versions eat the same file formats, so you can freak out Windows users.
Rating:
Summary: Entirely tolerable :)
Review: While there is a lot more exciting software out there, something like the Office suite is one of those basic things that makes or breaks a user's experience. The deeper I sink into management, the more time I spend using Word, Excel, and Entourage.
Office v. X really makes that time as pleasant as possible. If you're familiar with the suite of Office products, there's nothing really earth-shatteringly different... between Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, it's more a matter of a bunch of small changes in interface and workflow that make the overall experience better (along with not needing to start up Classic).
On the other hand, Entourage is bittersweet. It's really a fantastic email, calendaring, and contact management piece... it handles time-zones, links contacts, meetings, and email messages, and even lets you automatically color-code messages and events based on who sent them. For our purposes it blows away both Outlook and Notes. At the same time there is an ugly side. You can't sync Entourage to a Palm yet (still under development at this time, but it should be available soon), which is a huge blow to its usability. There are issues with the size of the database it maintains (as well as the fact that it's a self-contained database that's useless to other applications), and it has some glaring issues accessing mail on some IMAP4 servers (Domino, for example).
All in all, it's an excellent package... Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit does a wonderful job (in my experience, MS Office v. X provides a much better overall user experience than Office XP). Bottom line is that, even while there are still some bugs that really need to be worked out, Office v. X is well worth the cost of the license. Keep up the good work, MBU.
Rating: 
Summary: Do not buy this garbage!
Review: Who I am? A professional writer that bought and Imac, 17'screen, 1 GZH, with all the ORIGINAL software.
The computer is WONDERFUL. Then, I decided to buy the Office Package. That was the GREATEST MISTAKE!
I wanted word processor for my writings. Then, I would explain what happens. I charged the program in the Apple. Then, the word processor starts to fail. how? Simple at random, when you are working in a window, or open a word document, the message appears:
WORD QUITS UNEXPECTLY, THE SYSTEM HAS NOT BEEN DAMAGED
I contacted Microsoft for help. They told me that it was a kind of crashing because of fonts interfering? What fonts? That of the Macintosh? It is supossed that the Office is suited for the Mac, isn't? They offered me upgrades, None of them work.
I have to write a novel this summer. How can I be sure that, when I get the chapter 25, then, the message WORD QUITS UNEXPECLTY. THE SYSTEM HAS NOT BEEN DAMAGED, appears?
All what I did was:
First, buy the Imac
Second, buy The office.
Third, Install the Office
Four. garbage as a Result!
Do not believe any of the other reviews, or otherwise, loose your money. This program is pure garbage. I put one star because it has no option to put ZERO stars.
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