Hello Stephanie,
Office 2004 is the more recent.
Office X was built on a very early (pre-release) version of OS X and has
acquired some limitations as OS X has evolved enormously in the past six
years. If you only use Word more or less as a typewriter, the consequences
probably aren't profound, but for more intensive use they are. And Word 2004
is much improved over all compared with Word X.
Whether you would want to upgrade to 2004 when 2008 is due for release early
next year depends on your circumstances and on whether, for example, you use
macros (2008 won't support macros -- a major impediment for some users).
You can now buy heavily discounted, legitimate copies of 2004 on the Web --
e.g. via eBay.
As for Word 2008: Craig Eisler, General Manager of Microsoft's Mac Business
Unit, said recently in the official blog for Office 2008, Mac Mojo
(
http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/): "visit us here at Mac Mojo on September
18th for the first of our bi-weekly updates leading up to our [release to
manufacture] in mid-December." If Word 2008 broadly follows the latest
manifestation on Windows (Word 2007), albeit one would expect it to have
unique Mac features, it will prove to have some clever features that are
more intuitively accessible to the average user than in earlier versions.
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from North America and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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