I’ve been looking into Microsoft’s new Office 2008 suite which will be released later this year for the Mac platform. I have to say I’m impressed! Office is one of those tools which you still really can’t do without on a Mac, with Apple’s offering of Pages and Keynote excelling in some areas but still definitely lacking in others. I’ve been using Office for Mac since I bought a Mac Mini a couple of years ago and I really do need it in my day to day workflow.

The new version of 2008 to be released later this year will already be a ‘must have’ upgrade simply because it will be a universal application. Microsoft have sure taken their time to make Office universal, but then again so have companies such as Adobe so it doesn’t really seem to be a case of spite for Mac owners. Rather that it’s a large program and a difficult one to port across to a universal binary.

Excel appears to have really redefined itself, now offering several templates making the tasks people actually use Excel for a great deal easier. Managing finances through the program is greatly simplified using these new tools and wizards. This should be very useful and save a great deal of time for people who don’t need to get to grips with the advanced features of the application.

Powerpoint also seems to be taking a step in the right direction. I imagine Keynote will remain my presentation tool of choice, though I’m open to being proven wrong by this new version. The interface seems to have undergone a complete overhaul and it seems much more concise. The graphical effects and visuals offered also seem much more impressive and it seems more like a sleek presentation package than the clunky and generic Powerpoint I’m used to seeing.

I’m looking forward to buying and using this for myself, simply because it seems that Microsoft are starting to understand that Mac users are a growing market. Who knows, they may one day be known solely for making Office for Mac (once Windows has been well and truly killed off by OS 11) - they need to keep their future options open!

I’ve just upgraded and downloaded Mint v2 for a few of my websites. Whilst I don’t really agree with Shaun charging an extra $20.00 to upgrade, he has every right to and it’s a worthy upgrade. The look and feel of the design is much more refined and everything is easier to make sense of. The new graphs are greatly welcome, and some of the new pepper is excellent. I’m testing it on a few domains before making the decision to upgrade several as I’m not sure how absolutely vital it is at the moment. Once the Peppermill starts to fill up and the community kicks in it should be a great deal more worthwhile upgrading.

I like the new bolder look. It’s much easier to navigate around and different pieces of information are prioritised better. The preferences are also slightly easier to use now. I had a brief experiment with Shaun Inman’s new RSS pepper but couldn’t get it to work - I’m quite happy with my Feedburner pepper so am sticking with that for now.

My time at Manchester University is going incredibly quickly. I’ve been staying in Dalton Ellis Hall for several months and I’ve recently had to make the decision of picking a house to stay in next year. We wanted to stay in the same area (Victoria Park), and looked round several over the last week. We settled on this one yesterday and signed the contracts.

It’s quite a big decision, and a lot of money to commit to. I’m glad we’ve found somewhere decent to spend next year, and hopefully make our own!