Office 2004 for Mac OS X has arrived. This week, copies of the productivity suite began hitting store shelves. Microsoft has promised users new tools to manage information, as well as the ability to create "stunning" documents.

To deliver on its promises, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit has included charting improvements for Excel, new 'smart' buttons in Word and Excel, more than 100 new design templates, new animation and transitions in PowerPoint, and a save as picture function.

Office 2004 for Mac also offers soft shadows to add a unique visual effect to documents and scrapbook functionality.

A new featured called Project Center offers customers a "home base" to access e-mails, documents, contacts, and audio and video. Project Center is integrated into Entourage.

Virtual PC 7 did not make the cut, however, and will not be found in the available SKUs. Virtual PC 7 will instead be made available in the second half of 2004. As a result, one edition of Office 2004 is orphaned from the rest. Microsoft cited a more rigorous testing schedule and the slipped release date of Windows XP Service Pack 2 for the delay.

Customers who desire an alternative to Microsoft Office must wait until 2006 for a native Mac OS X release of OpenOffice 2.0.

Six localized versions of Office 2004 for Mac will be distributed to vendors in the coming weeks: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish. US pricing -- sampled from the Apple Store -- lists the Standard Edition for $399.95 and the Upgrade Edition for $229.95.