Prince McLean's Road to Mac Office 2008

AppleInsider's at it again. After bringing us the nuts and bolts of Leopard, they've brought Microsoft Office 2008 in focus.

Prince McLean is back again with his dissection of Office 2008: its history and a comparison with the competition: iWork 08.

The road to Office 2008 starts with an introduction then the installation experience and a discussion about the user interface.

The series continutes with an Office 2008 vs iWork 08 face off. Word vs Pages. Excel vs Number. Powerpoint vs Keynote.

Word vs Pages

• In Word 2008, Page Layout View is renamed as Print Layout View. A new Publishing Layout View is added.
• In editing Autoshapes in Word, you still have to click OK in the editing window every time you want to see the changes made in a shape. In Pages, changes are reflected as you make them.
• There's no WordArt equivalent nor a bibliography feature in Pages.
• Pages has strong graphics and composition tools.
• Word 2008 now supports Automator while giving up VBA macros. However, Automator support will setback interested parties $300. 

Excel vs Numbers

• Excel 2008 supports 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns
• Excel's formula bar is not integrated into the spreadsheet window but is instead it has its own window.
• Numbers only has half the functions of Excel. Can't do pivot tables, has weak statistical and financial functions, and has no engineering or database functions.
• Numbers' templates are consumer oriented. More professional templates are needed.
• Excel has more charting options like radar, surface, X-Y scatter charts.
• Numbers uses the same non-modal editing like in Pages, allowing you to see changes as you are making them. 
• Numbers' 3D charts can be tilted, rotated, given shadows and texture.
• Though Excel has is more powerful and has more features than Numbers, Excel 2008 might turn off those who plan to use it for business. Numbers is for those with 'less technical needs'.

Powerpoint vs Keynote

• Powerpoint 2008 cut the number of view modes from five down to three: Normal, Slide Sorter, and Slide Show.
• You can now rearrange slides in the sidebar in Powerpoint 2008.
• Unlike in Keynote where slide transitions is previewed in the Inspector, you have to switch to Slide Show to see what a transition looks like in Powerpoint.
• Tables in Powerpoint are nothing to write home about. Formatting Palette is awkward to use like those in other Office apps. 
• You can't do charts in Powerpoint without Excel. They're tied together in this task. Keynote is independent of Numbers when it comes to making charts for presentations. 
• SmartArt Graphics in Powerpoint make it easy to "make it easy to lay out automated designs". Keynote doesn't have anything comparable.
• Both presentation softwares can export to the same formats but Keynote has more options. Export QuickTime movies under Keynote preserves animations and interactive hyperlinks can be used.
• Powerpoint has weak graphical presentation tools and the modal approach to editing makes it annoying to edit presentations. 
• Keynote has better templates, animation and transition sets. Added features like Instant Alpha for erasing backgrounds, Smart Builds, intelligent masking and image editing tools makes Keynote far superior than Powerpoint. 

Microsoft Office 2008 starts at $150. iWork 08 costs $79. $69.99 in Amazon.com.