Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit, the largest gaggle of Mac programmers outside Apple, has produced a new Mac Office suite for the first time since 2004. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac comprises new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage and Messenger.

Office 2008 for Mac is available as a Home and Student Edition, a standard version, plus a Special Media Edition. We’ve reviewed the Home and Student Edition. Its price is closest to that of Apple iWork ’08, which offers a useful comparison in this review.

Essentially, all the suites have the same tools, except that the Home and Student Edition lacks Exchange Server support and Automator tools that you get in the standard version, while the Special Media Edition adds Microsoft Expression Media, the fruit of Microsoft’s purchase of iView a year and half ago; it’s a clever database app for viewing digital media assets and files.

Office 2008 for Mac has some suite-wide changes. Firstly, it’s a universal binary version for PowerPC or Intel Macs; it was faster on our new MacBooks than the 2004 edition, but slow on PowerPC Macs.

Secondly, file format support has broadened and covers all the Open XML file formats used by Office 2007 for Windows. This makes life easier for those with colleagues using Office 2007 for Windows. Due to licensing conditions, you’ll need the pricier, commercially licensed, standard or Media Edition to use Office in a business environment.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage have not been massively overhauled, but have had tools repositioned and made more obvious. Microsoft told us that most of the requests for new features were requests for tools that already existed in Office 2004 for Mac, but were hard to find.

We’ll comment on the value of the different packages at the end of the review. For now, let’s crack open the box and take an in-depth look at what’s new in the different apps.

Word

Word 2008 for Mac looks cosmetically different to Word 2004 for Mac. However, with the exception of Elements Gallery and a few minor points, the feature-set is almost intact. The only reason we can see for upgrading is to get better interoperability with Office 2007 for Windows.