Maybe the big feature of Word 2008 was that it was Intel-native, but apparently they forgot to optimize it for PowerPC as well. It takes forever to scroll through a complex document using a 2.0GHz PowerMac G5. Also, text lags noticably when typing, i.e. I have to type, then wait for the system to catch up. The new file format takes longer to save and open, and sometimes produces larger files than the doc format despite the zip compression. Using QuickLook is hit or miss with the new file format, sometimes you can get a preview, but once your document gets bigger and more complex it gives up and does not offer any preview. If you have your scrollbars setup in System Preferences to "Jump to here" instead of "Jump to the next page", Word will instead ignore any attempts to click in the scroll bar to scroll. (It will still move the scroller, but the page will not scroll.) This is unbelievably annoying.

On the plus side, keeping the toolbars in the document window is a better interface, and is more maclike, though I would have preferred the Word 2007 interface that let you display two pages side by side. Also, I have not had any crashes yet, which is more than I could say about the old Office.

Basically, the new Office is as slow on my desktop as the old Office was on my MacBook. I am considering going back to 2004 on my desktop at least.