Office 2008 plays nice with the enterprise

If you're an enterprise Mac user who's patiently awaiting the latest iteration of Microsoft Office on the Mac, you're probably used to hearing bad news by now. So here's a bit of good news for a change: in addition to being the first Office to run as a Universal Binary application, the oft-delayed Office 2008 will also see the addition of a number of features that are designed to make life easier for admins. Microsoft has been offering sneak peeks of version 2k7 this month and among the new tidbits revealed is the fact that Office will now use the standard Apple installer. Now that might not seem like earth-shattering news, but if you've ever tried to integrate Office on the Mac into a standard deployment image, you'll know the frustration that often results from the software's proprietary installation method. The Office 2008 installer file will arrive as a standard .pkg, meaning that you'll finally be able to manipulate it using Apple Remote Desktop and AppleScript, for automated installation, customization and updating.  

For more on Office 2008:
- see this Ars Technica article