Similarly, if you run a small business and are keen to keep costs down, you can use the applications that come with your Mac anyway, such as Mail and iCal. To get Outlook will set you back an additional £100, effectively pricing the mail and calendar client at more than Word, Excel and PowerPoint combined.įor home users, there's absolutely no need to spend the extra though – so go for the Home & Student edition. Microsoft has dropped the prices of both compared to Office 2008, so you now get the Home & Student for £90 (only £10 more than iWork '09). There are two flavours of Office 2011, one with Outlook and the other without. But don't let these things put you off, because this is a vast improvement over what came before at a more competitive price. There are still some annoying little characteristics that will grate over time – such as when you click Cancel to get rid of the Document Gallery, it still opens a fresh document in that app. Ultimately, though, you can't get by on the old-style toolbars alone – the range of options just isn't there.

Doing so in Outlook was a Mac-like case of drag and drop, whereas in Word, there was a more complex dialog. You get a regular toolbar above the Ribbon, which you can customise in the different apps.