It's ok...

Author's Rating:

Pros: Native support for Microsoft Office files (of course)

Cons: Hard to use, bothers you with updates, iWork suite is better value for Macs.

The Bottom Line: 
Only buy this if you need it desperately for your Mac, otherwise use it in bootcamp or get the iWork suite instead.

Author's Review
I have Microsoft Office 2008 Home and Student Edition. It's ok. I have used Windows 2003 and 2007 heaps over the years and when I finally made the switch to Macs in January this year, I expected the same ease of use and feature set as found in said software above. This is not the case. There are not enough features at all in the software, and the features that are there simply don't work as well as they do on Windows.

I very much dislike the Adobe feel that Microsoft put on this software, with the different, detatched panels for each bunch of features in the software. It works well for Photoshop and Flash, but for Microsoft Office, ease of use is the key and there is no ease of use to be found here. It's updating feature gets very annoying very fast, bothering you every time you open the software.

If you desperately need Microsoft Office, try to get it cheap as you won't really be using it much once you install it, as Mac OS X comes with in-built capabilities to read Word, Excel and Powerpoint files off the bat. If you don't need it, but you just want a basic word processor, go for the Apple iLife software instead, as (although very different to Microsoft Office) it is easy to use and made for mac. Oh, and if you have bootcamp, use the Windows version instead - it rocks the socks off iWork and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.