Tools for Practitioners: Microsoft Office

Once upon a time, Microsoft was playing catch-up with products like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC platform, and Office component applications like Word and Excel demonstrated real leadership only on the Macintosh platform, where the products were originally created. But by the time Windows 95 appeared, Microsoft had begun devoting huge effort to developing Office for the PC, and it soon became apparent that the PC version of the suite would be taking priority. After moving swiftly to dominate the PC market with Office, development on the Mac platform started catching up once again, and now the two products leapfrog one another via offset release cycles — with the latest features being introduced alternately in the Mac or the PC versions. The Microsoft Office suite is now the de facto standard on both platforms.

With Microsoft’s next PC-based release (Office 12) still at least many months away, the Macintosh version — Microsoft Office 2004 — is currently the ‘latest and greatest’, but even now it is not necessarily at full feature parity with its Windows sibling. One question for Mac OS X-based practitioners is simply this: is Office 2004 enough to enable seamless interoperation with the world of Windows? And is the full Office suite necessary for the typical mental health professional in private practice?

Check our full review of Microsoft Office to find out!

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