The Coziest Office Yet

Because of their meager ranks (currently about 3% of the personal-computing universe), Macintosh users have long been given second-class status in the software world. Sure, Apple has created some nice products, such as iTunes, for its computers. But most third-party programs are written for Windows PCs and then adapted, sometimes poorly and often months later, for Apple machines. A notable exception arrives later this month when Microsoft releases the latest version of its ubiquitous Microsoft Office package for the Mac. My verdict: Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is clearly superior to its PC counterpart for most users. Last fall Microsoft put out a bloated update of Office for Windows that focused more on collaborating with other users than on making it easier for you to get your own work done. The streamlined Office for Mac puts individuals first.

Its best new feature is the project center, a one-stop shop for organizing your files, contacts, e-mail messages and notes. Instead of having to switch from Word to an email program and then over to Excel, Mac users can access all data relating to a given project from a central view in Entourage (the email program included in Office for Mac). Creating a project is as simple as choosing a name and due date. Then, every time you create a new document or view an e-mail that you want to include, click on a button to add it. You can add contacts, spreadsheets, presentations and even non-Office files.

Office for Mac, priced at $399 (students and teachers can get it for $149, and customers upgrading from a previous version pay $239), is packed with other handy features. A scrapbook lets you drop Web-page clippings, photos, logos, even e-mail snippets into a space that automatically saves these tidbits for future use in any application. A notebook view in Word simulates the look of ruled binder paper and lets you flag text with eight different colored icons. And there are more than 100 new special effects for your PowerPoint presentations.

One caveat: what you won't find in Office 2004 for Mac are a bunch of extra applications found in its PC counterpart, such as the Access database program and the Publisher desktop publishing module. For most people, that's just fine. This is one case where less is definitely more.