In general, I think Office 2011 is a good upgrade to 2008. A lot of the deficiences in Office 2008 have been addressed, and the application is a bit more "mac like".
PROS:
Probably the biggest change people will see out of the gate are interface changes. I think the move to a more "ribbon like" interface was a good one, that helps keep everything you want together (especially on multiple monitors), but the formatting toolbars are still around if you want to back to those.
Help is now Apple help based, all versions support Automator actions, apps are much more friendly to spaces, spotlight and time machine, VBA is back, etc.
Outlook is a great addition if you're connecting your Mac to an Exchange server at work, and is actually pretty decent on it's own. I think I may actually prefer it to Mail.app, but we'll see how my thoughts are over a longer time scale.
CONS:
Office 2011 is now intel only, but considering the fact that Apple has also started dropping PowerPC support, I don't think that's a huge deal.
Licensing has changed for the business version, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your situation. Office 2008 let you install a copy on a desktop and a portable computer. Office 2011 now comes in a "1 license" and "2 license" version. If you don't have 2 computers, this might be a positive thing for you, but if you've got a desktop and a laptop, you're probably not too happy about it.
Office 2011 also does require activation, although that's quick and painless. I'm sure some people won't like it though. Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 - 1 Pack
Since getting Outlook 2011 is the reason I purchased Office 2011 for the Mac, I'm writing my review only about that component of the suite. I've spent the day using it, and in general, I'm disappointed. While it does look appealing and runs fast, I think Microsoft has slimmed it down too much from Entourage. For example, there is no "resend" option for messages, a feature that I use a lot so that I don't have to copy & paste e-mail that I want to send out to a few people but not as a blind group. Next, while one can still marginally re-configure the toolbar, it's very limited. For example, I find the delete button is in a very awkward position (for me), but I can't move it. And finally, I miss not seeing any feedback while the program is checking for mail (unless you go to the trouble of checking the progress window). I'll spend more time with Outlook, but at this point, I'm seriously considering going back to Entourage. I've never had this experience before with a Microsoft product for the Mac, and I've been using them since they first started making them.
I work at a company where most of us are assigned Lenovo laptops running WinXP, but the clever people use their own Macs. I was part of a small pilot that were assigned Macs, although many of the business apps require a Windows VM to work. I tired of the poor performance of the apps, so I bought my own Windows laptop.
I've always wanted to be able to use the Mac full time, primarily for the coolness factor. But there are so many shortcomings, I just couldn't do it. Even with the arrival of Office 2011, the short battery life (this is a 3-year old MBP) and lack of a right-click button try my patience. I thought that with a new version of Outlook, I might be able to make the switch. However, after using Outlook 2010 for a year now on Windows 7, this Mac version seems like two steps back. Here are a few of my observations:
LIKES
Reading pane in conversation view shows first line of all messages in conversation (mail)
DISLIKES
No OneNote (global)
No side-by-side calendar (calendar)
No auto-population of shared calendars and calendar hierarchy (calendar)
No drag and drop of emails to calendar (mail/calendar)
No business card view (contacts)
No folder view (global)
No icon view; weird since this is the default view for many Mac things (notes)
Can't distinguish between new emails and replies for auto-signature (preferences)
Can't open two windows, e.g., Calendar on one screen, Inbox on another (global)
I really wanted to love the new Outlook 2011 for Mac. Eagerly looked forward to it all year, and patiently used Thunderbird despite it's shortcomings until Office 2011 for Mac was released. Went out and purchased it on Oct 26, the day it was released.
To put it mildly, I am disappointed and wish Outlook 2011 lived up to the hype. Word, Excel and Powerpoint are great, and in my opinion, come close to the Windows version, and I am satisfied with those programs. But, let us face it - Outlook is what makes Office 2011 worth considering, at least until you see it in person.
Here are a list of huge annoyances in Outlook, and wonder what Microsoft engineers are smoking or drinking while choosing to release this for Mac users:
1) The eagerly awaited PST support works, but only in one direction, from PC to Mac. Once you migrate to the Mac version, there is no going back to PST version, or to export email, settings and calender items it to any other externally compatible format. Only supported export format is a little known OLM file format export that has no known windows equivalent.
2) Outlook has an MBOX import feature to import emails from MBOX files that are the Unix standard. However, Thunderbird uses an open variant of the MBOX standard, called MBOXRD. Outlook cannot read mboxrd files, and such files are grayed out and un-selectable from the import wizard. The only way to import email messages from Thunderbird is to convert existing MBOXRD files into the standard MBOX format using a 3rd party paid utility. The other solution, to import messages into Apple Mail from Thunderbird and then import them again into Outlook is a bug ridden solution that does not work if you have several thousand email messages already in Thunderbird. Apple Mail in Snow Leopard chokes and crashes with such large email message counts.
3) The user interface in Outlook is downright ugly. It is nowhere as good as the Windows version, and completely ignores Mac user interface standards. To start, the message list view fonts can only be set to small/medium/large, and no option is available to customize the font colors or styles to make the presentation crisper. The allowed settings are all ugly, and it is impossible to visually distinguish between read/unread messages quickly, especially while scrolling hundreds of emails. Next, the message list view does not have alternating row background colors, like in iTunes, Thunderbird for Mac, or any other Cocoa application. This makes it even more harder to read. The default font setting for the message lists use a font smoothing method that renders text blurry and shabby. In addition, both the sender and subject line in the message list are shown in the same font, so it is visually harder to separate messages.
4) There is no progress bar while downloading messages as scheduled. You have to bring up a separate progress bar window by clicking through the menu to see send/receive progress. What were they thinking when they designed this user interface?
5) The ribbon bar is not customizable. The default buttons are large and take up screen space, without adding any value to power users. No way to turn it off. In addition to the ribbon, there is a separate toolbar under the menu, that can be customized. Why have a separate ribbon bar and a toolbar taking up screen real estate?
6) Outlook does not sync the iPhone directly. It relies on a separate sync mechanism for syncing contacts with the Mac address book. No way to sync notes and to-do lists with the iPhone, so it makes it quite useless for an iPhone user.
7) Outlook is glacially slow. To compare, Thunderbird or Apple Mail launch to ready state in 2 seconds of clicking on my 17-inch Macbook Pro, despite having about 8000 email messages to show. Outlook takes a full 25 seconds to launch to ready state.
8) There is no way to selectively enable/disable full HTML email support based on sender in Outlook. The "download images" option can either be turned globally ON or OFF. This is a security hole that is a deal breaker for me. I use a Mac due to it's relative security compared to Windows, and Outlook drills a huge hole in that security at the expense of usage experience.
9) Seems like the Microsoft testers tested Outlook with just a few test messages, and did not think through the needs of real-world users who need to manage hundreds of email messages in their mail client.
10) The Office for Mac web site has a community section where users are posting problems. There are hundreds of users reporting similar problems there, and the suggested solutions from Microsoft are just half baked band-aids.
Even though I am annoyed at some Thunderbird features, it currently stands heads and shoulders above Outlook in speed and user friendliness. I gladly switched back to Thunderbird to manage my emails after using Outlook for a day.
Wait for v3.1 of Outlook for Mac, and treat this version as typical Microsoft v1.0 (euphemism for "useless" version). Don't waste your money if you are happy with the current Word/Excel/Powerpoint 2008 for Mac. - Outlook - Microsoft - Mac - Microsoft Office'
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