Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

I started really working with and on computers in 1981, with my first computer, The Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer, which has a long and storied history. Pretty much every evening, and every day during the summers, I started my free time looking at this:

And I'm nostaligic for it to this day. Around 1987, thanks the computer studio at Memphis College of Art, I became an equally big fan of the Amiga 500. Although I had some fun playing with the Color Computer's graphic capabilities, including what could be done in Microsoft BASIC as well as apps like Chesire Cat's Graphicom software (Copy and paste graphics! Invert! Wow!), the Amiga 500 and Deluxe Paint and Digipaint and Digiview, which allowed me to work in tens-of-thousands of colors and play with scanning via a video source (in our case, a black and white security camera with a color wheel to assist in color scanning), blew open the doors as far as what could be done with graphics and computers. Plus, it was fun as anything I've ever done in my life.

Then, after about a year of non-stop action on the Amiga, I started working in the Mac studio. And though I've worked on plenty of Windows and Linux desktops since then, nothing has ever bested the Mac, in my opinion.

Even though, when I started, it was in a studio with a few Mac IIs and several Mac 512ks. Over the years, I have personally owned or have worked on almost 25 models of Macintosh. The Amiga has faded (and I never owned one), and while I still have my Color Computer III (my third or fourth, I lost track) in storage, I will probably never boot it up again. But I fully expect to be using my Mac until the day I die.

Which brings me to Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. This edition includes Microsoft Word 2008, Microsoft Excel 2008, Microsoft Powerpoint 2008, Microsoft, Entourage 2008, and Messenger for Mac. While there is still no Microsoft Access for Mac (a slap, indeed), and they dropped support for some of their older productivity apps like Microsoft Project for Mac years ago, it's still a robust suite of Office products . . . and shows that the Mac is more than important enough for Microsoft to throw some serious development resources at. And right now we have the full retail product for only $289.95! Get it while it's hot.