New icons for the whole package. Office 2008 has the same components than 2004: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Entourage.
The applications need more time than the previous version of Office to start on PPC based computers, while it runs faster than Office 2004 on Intel based Macintoshs, but once they are launched, you’ll be amazed.
Let’s take a closer look to Excel to start.

First thing you notice are the buttons and the inspector, yes, at first sight it looks like an.. Apple application, the buttons are Mac friendly (unlike Acrobat with its yellow folders icons), and almost all of iWork users (and iWeb) are now used to the inspector. In Office 2008, the inspector’s title bar backgrounds colors are the same than the application’s icon color: green for excel, blue for word…

Next thing you notice, is the introduction of 4 tabs: Sheets, Charts, SmartArt Graphics and WordArt, making it easier than ever to insert a chart, a graphic or any other content you are used to insert on Excel: the animations are beautiful!

You can pick a chart from more than 50 charts types!
I love iWork, but Office is still the standard in the business world; as a result I have to admit Office 2008 is much better than iWork: it is compatible, it is powerful, it is beautiful.. for the moment…

But Apple’s iWork is still in a version 1, while Microsoft has a huge experience in business software solutions.

Posted in 3rd Party Software, Microsoft