Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Enter to Win a Custom-Color MacBook Pro and Office 2008 for Mac. Microsoft Office for Mac loved the Mac community since way back when. What's the perfect gift for a long-term commitment?"

Pretty simple rules, just follow them on Twitter, or ReTweet @OfficeforMac and include the hashtag #officeformac. The contest ends on February 25th, 2010 and is only open to US and Canadian residents. You can go here to get all the information. Oh, you also get a copy of Office 2008 along with the 2.53GHz MacBook Pro.

"Microsoft has decided to give its Office 2008 selection a makeover by ditching two of its three choices and replacing them with a Business Edition. Now, it's easier to decide what version you need: are you a home or student user, or are you a business user?"

Didn't they do something similar with the new version of Windows? I think the more they can scale back the better, too many choices leads to confusion, at least it did for me when I was trying to figure out what version of Windows I needed, back in the day when I had to choose.

"Microsoft's Mac Business Unit this week is making available to Mac users a "fully functional, no strings attached" free trial of Office 2008 so that prospective buyers and users of previous versions can 'kick the tires' on new suite before plunking down the cash for a permanent copy."

I'm not a power user of office product software, so I haven't had much of a need to use anything but Open Office since I switched from using Microsoft Office products about a year ago. And I've been pretty happy with it so far. However if you want to give this a try, even though it is only for 30 days, you get full functionality (a first from Microsoft) of the Microsoft Office 2008 suite of products.

If you do decide to buy, they offer three editions: student for $149.95 USD, standard for $399.95 USD and Special Media Edition for $499.95 USD. Before forking out the bucks, best stop in at Amazon.com, the price differential is from roughly $40.00 USD to about $250.00 USD. Quite a difference.