This suite specially packaged with a full version of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition features the full Office 2008 with Microsoft Expression Media. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is another tool for the Mac user. After four years of silence since Microsoft Office 2004, you'll have to decide whether this version is for you or not. Microsoft Expression Media targets the business users who need Microsoft Exchange Server support and Office-specific Automator actions for a one-step stop for their digital asset management system to visually catalog, organize, and resend all your digital assets.

Microsoft Expression Media, previously known as iView MediaPro, has been reviewed by Dale Fletcher, who has used and loved iView MediaPro for years. To read his review of Expression Media 2.0 go to mlmug.org/EM2.html.

It is impossible to cover ALL the new features of Office 2008 for Mac in 800 words, so I will concentrate on the ones I was impressed with most or that were the most obvious to me.

New in Word is the way files are saved. The new default is Microsoft Office Open XML. Your docs are saved as DOCX and not the old DOC format. Therefore you have to think before clicking SAVE. An older version of Word will not open the new DOCX files without installing an update.

I was not able to open documents made in Pages with Word. Therefore if I am communicating with PC users I cannot use Pages. But with Word 2008 I have to remember to save as DOC. I thought computers were supposed to make things simple but every time we upgrade we have to go through the growing pains. It's exhausting at times.

Students will love the Elements Gallery. CEOs can easily add business graphics such as process diagrams and relationship charts by a simple click-by-click process. Dropping photos and other images into Word documents has gotten easier with the new Object Palette letting you choose pictures from your iPhoto Library.

Word sports a new Notebook Layout. It's simple to use and has a very clean interface. My favorite feature is the recording of notes from the Mac's microphone. Keeping the Audio tool active in the toolbar lets you record your best thinking aloud.

New in Word 2008 is the Publishing Layout view with a centralized interface for making newsletters, flyers, posters, brochures, and other graphically rich documents.

Let's move on with the new Entourage 2008, which has a new interface with lots of new features. One of the most welcomed by me was the ability to import my Apple Address Book and my iCal. What a wonderful surprise. (However, it did not import my groups in my Address Book.) So, I now can get auto fill to do the job when I send a new email to someone. I can also get any calendar view I prefer (It's usually by the month). The search feature is much improved. And I love the To Do List.

I have been using Mail because I wanted to wean myself from Entourage in preparation for the iPhone compatibility and so on. However, Apple Mail has been acting up lately and I've been very happy with Entourage as a backup. It's surprisingly becoming my preferred email app for its stability during this review.

The only thing that I have yet to master in Entourage is the Rules. I still cannot get some emails to come into specific folders. Mail is better in this regard.

New in Entourage is a nifty user-interface device called MyDay. It is designed to let you view your current to-dos and appointments without having Entourage open. You can add a quick to-do but you cannot create a new appointment or a new event in MyDay. You have to edit notes, reminders, and events in Entourage.

MyDay is about viewing quickly and at a glance your appointments in a floating window smaller than an application window. It works best on a large display, otherwise it can get in the way. If you make it smaller it ceases to show much information.

Let's move on to Excel. I am not a heavy Excel user, so the simple spreadsheets I do use it for do not offer anything new for me. However, I have read reviews by others and they suggest a few enhancements and mention a few downfalls. The pros are the Elements Gallery, which can save time. There are an easy-to-use Formula Builder and better graphics and image building. The cons for Excel 2008 are that it eliminates macro support. You have to be a wiz at AppleScript to recode all your macros. There is no support for Services and the Standard toolbar isn't free-floating. Some bugs in Excel 2004 still exist in Excel 2008.

If you have previous versions of Microsoft Office, you will be prompted on how to handle incompatibilities by the install wizard. Right now I have two versions of Word without any incompatibility issues. When I began this review, I began with Microsoft Messenger. I usually use iChat. I could not get Microsoft Messenger to accept my email address and password so I gave up.

You'll have to decide if Microsoft Office 2008 is for you but it is worth the money if you need all the new features.