Posted by : Anonymous on May 23, 2004 - 02:08 AM Microsoft

The latest Macintosh edition of Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite does text, e-mail, spreadsheets and presentations with aplomb. Then again, so did its previous versions. The big hook for the new version, Office 2004 for Mac, is its improved business-friendly tools, so Mac users can share and manage data just as easily as people who run that other, more dominant operating system (hint: Microsoft also makes it).

Office 2004 may be an easy sell to businesses, but it's going to be tougher to persuade consumers who don't run their homes like a project management office and can't easily absorb the $399 full standard edition or $239 upgrade price. (A $150 student-teacher deal is offered.)

After all, the Office v. X version released just three years ago was a solid offering that sported an entirely new look to take advantage of the Mac's top-notch visual capabilities.

Still, Office 2004 does offer a fair share of enticements, including improved stability, a useful starting screen called Project Gallery, compatibility reports to ensure creations play nicely with other operating systems and a help system that's, well, more helpful.

The strongest appeal will be to businesses that run Macs or combination of Macs and PCs.

Office 2004 helps manage and share projects, easily incorporating elements from all four major programs - word processor Word, spreadsheet Excel, e-mail and calendar keeper Entourage and presentation editor PowerPoint.

The central collaboration tool, Project Center, is part of Entourage, which used to be little more than an e-mail program. Now, it's much more like - and arguably better than - Outlook, which does much of the same stuff on computers running Microsoft's Windows.

Once a project is established, the software will automatically monitor a designated folder on your computer for any new content. Say, you write a new report in Word and store it. The report will automatically appear in the Project Center.

That report will also be accessible to others if your computer is configured to share files over a network. If everyone is on a Microsoft Exchange server, users can synchronize their calendars, set up meetings and coordinate task lists.

And, if the project has a deadline, it counts down the number of days. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Entourage's improved spam filters caught the dozen junk messages my Internet service provider's filters had missed, and the software now sports a simpler, three-column view like Outlook 2003. Messages can be grouped and searched by project, sender, date and other criteria.

The suite's word processor, whose previous versions were already fairly mature, has undergone fewer changes than Entourage.

A note-taking module lets users organize thoughts in an outline. To help the thinking process along, the screen resembles blue-ruled binder paper.

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