As you know, there are several Office versions. The Professional and Special Media boast Exchange server support, whereas Home and Student does not have it. I wonder, what is it all about? Are there any special files that one can copy and enable this support? I could not find anything specific to this issue on my computer. Moreover, no direct reply from Google searches.

Alex,

I don't know if this answers your specific question (I don't use Exchange) but read Snow Leopard and Exchange: it just works.

Thanks a lot, Jon! This is actually about Apple apps. My concern is whether the stripped-down version of Office 2008 would be functioning well in the Exchange environment. I read an interview with the manager of Mac BU at Microsoft, and what he said, in my opinion, would qualify the whole unit for getting fired. So many features were not implemented to match the ones in Outlook for Windows (or Outlook 2001 for Mac, dah!), that one has a clear impression that Entourage 2008 is a seriously crippled version of Outlook with just a remote hope for improvement. Another thing that makes me real angry is that Entourage 2004 worked fine with Exchange minus some Outlook features that are still missing in all versions of 2008 rendition. Now they have built a big smokescreen hinting at "support" or "no support" without plainly saying whether it works or not. Oh, well...
I will try and see if it works and then report back.

Exchange support for Office 2008 Home or Student is not a simple matter of adding a few files and turning on some hidden preferences. It is a matter of different executables with the functionality built in or excluded. Even at that the Mac BU has never made any pretense of supporting the full feature set of Office for Windows, the on again, off again support of Excel macros being a major case in point. Entourage has never been a stellar performer and I am not certain much, if anything is being lost in a future reversion to Outlook in the Microsoft Office For Mac suite.

Thanks, I suspected so... The big question is not really support but whether it will work as an e-mail client with Exchange. I don't need more than that. Speaking about Outlook, the same MS guy said that they are working on Outlook for Mac to replace Entourage in 2012, I guess. Speaking about pretenses, they claim that in Office 2008, Entourage had a big revamp; I guess, this is a real pretense.
I guess, the empirical method is the best one. I can always uninstall!