According to members of the Office product team I spoke to last night, the Excel team worked hard to ensure cross-platform compatibility with Excel 2010 on the Windows side - going so far as to print copies of a screenshot of compatibility errors from Excel 2008 with a big 'no' symbol over it and put them up on office doors and cubicle walls as a reminder of the team's goal. Excel also improves performance on large datasets and adds Sparklines as a display format for quick visibility of data. VB support was dropped in Office 2008 as the suite went Intel-native.
The big-ticket new features in this edition are many and varied we'll be digging deeper into them over the next few days.
Home & Student allows you to install Office 2011 on up to three personal machines.
Education versions with lower pricing are also available. The boxed app suite is also for sale in both Apple and Microsoft retail stores. The various editions are on sale & downloadable from Microsoft (US$150 for Home & Student, $280 for Home & Business which includes Outlook), or you can get the DVD versions.
Note that this version of Office is for Intel Macs only and does require Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later.
Enterprise and education customers have had access to the new version for a few weeks now, but as of late last night those users who had registered for free upgrades from Office 2008 (for purchases after August 1) were able to start downloading the software.
It's been percolating for ages, maturing like a fine wine and fermenting like a premium cheese: the latest edition of Microsoft Office for the Mac, Office 2011 (or Office 14, if you're counting version numbers) has finally made it to market.