Microsoft Office v. X for Mac Students and Teachers Edition

Rating:
Summary: Best of Both Worlds
Review: Let's face it, no matter how much you love your Mac there are times when you might find yourself wishing it was a PC so you could send a Word file to your PC using friend (who doesn't understand the joys of PDF). Well Microsoft, never being one to miss an opportunity, has delivered the full Office Suite for Mac and designed it to take complete advantage of OS X. What that translates into is simply the best Office Suite experience anyone can have.

All the apps (Word; Excel; PowerPoint; Entourage) are included unencumbered and many have features and enhancements that can ONLY be found on the Mac. Excel features customized keyboard shortcuts and the ability to create transparent charts. Word now features easy one button access to all your contacts in Entourage as well as the handy Data Merge Manager. PowerPoint now allows movies and features full compatibility with QuickTime. The layout and feel of Entourage is much improved over it's PC counterpoint Outlook.

At first Microsoft had said that this Student & Teacher version was non-upgradeable(The only difference between this and the more pricey Standard Edition), but they have since changed their minds to allow upgrades as long as you buy before the new version is released. You even get a three computer license! Finally, here's the proof that Microsoft can be generous when it wants to.

I've had this suite for many months now and have never loved using these apps more. Sending and receiving Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents is a breeze and I've never once had an issue opening a document sent from a PC user. Beyond the functionality, I love the way all these Microsoft apps look like part of OS X in full Aqua glory. If you need to communicate with PC users or simply want the best of both worlds, you can't do any better than running Microsoft Office v.X Student & Teacher edition on a Mac.

Rating:
Summary: Mac version a great value - missing some useful tools though
Review: This is a FULL version of the Microsoft Office suite, which is a good thing all by itself. The advantage of the Mac version, though, are the 3 licenses that come with it. This is fantastic - it allows you to install the package on 3 different Macs legally. So, if you have more than one computer in the house (and a lot of us do, now), you can have a copy on your desktop G4 or G5, one on your iBook or PowerBook, etc.
All the bells and whistles are included, so if you are experienced with the functions of Office X, this will be a brainless migration for you.
It is missing some abilities to translate some files though, which is true of the professional versions as well. It does not handle AppleWorks, OpenOffice, or even MSWorks files very well. This can be a problem if your school is standardized on products other than Microsoft. Of course, this is a common issue with MS suite - to which they always answer "Then you should standardize on Microsoft..." Typical.