Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 set to launch on October 26

Microsoft announced today that Office for Mac 2011 will be available for purchase on October 26. A welcome inclusion to the update is an OS X native version of Outlook, which comes in the wake of user complaints regarding Entourage.

With Apple's iWork now firmly established as a worthy suite of productivity software, Apple is not as perilously reliant on Microsoft Office as it used to be. That said, Office remains the de-facto standard when it comes to tasks like word processing and creating spreadsheets. And if you happen to be a Mac user counting down the days until Office for Mac 2011 hits store shelves, you're in luck.

Microsoft announced today that Office for Mac 2011 will be available for purchase on October 26. A welcome inclusion to the upcoming update is an OS X native version of Outlook, which comes in the wake of user complaints regarding Entourage.

As you might expect from Microsoft, Office for Mac 2011 will come in a variety of flavors. There's your Home and Student 2011 edition which will retail for $119, along with a Home and Business edition that will retail for $199.

One of the major features Microsoft is emphasizing in its new Office for Mac software is brute speed. In the promo video below, Microsoft engineers explain that while certain tasks in previous iterations of Office took up to 48 seconds to complete, the same tasks are now finished in under a second with the upcoming release.

via OfficeforMac