PC to mac compatibility?

I am now using windows and am considering getting a macbook. But I have a question regarding PC to Mac compatibility. If someone sends me a word, excel, powerpoint or PDF file, can it be opened by the included software, or do I have to buy/download new software to open them? Thank You.

Well Ive opened word files, pdfs and excel files embedded in word files and all have worked fine so far. You can just get the MS office for mac, and everything should work 100% to my knowledge. It is slow, but i think in the mean time until the new one for intel comes out Ill use MS office on my PC or via parallels. But compatibility shouldn't be an issue at all. There are many ways around it.

Or you can download NeoOffice. Its a mac version of OpenOffice. and it is basically MS office for free. It has its own file types but can also read and save as microsoft file types and many more. just google NeoOffice.

The PDF files will open fine, but you will have to get MS Office Mac or download NeoOffice. MS doesn't include the free demo versions of office for the Mac like they do for the PC.

Technically, the included TextEdit program will open Word documents, but you'll definitely need another program to open Excel and Powerpoint files. Thankfully, there are many free options available to you. As stated above, NeoOffice is your best bet.

I personally didn't plop down for the Mac version of Office because the trial was horribly slow to load. However, once Office 2007/2008 becomes available, I'll be sure to give that a try.

For Word files at least, a very capable (and MUCH faster) alternative to NeoOffice is Abiword (www.abisource.com). Abiword will read and write .doc format, and has a much more compact .abw format that it uses for its native file type. I like Abiword a lot - it may be a good alternative... and it is open source freeware.

There is also an EXCELLENT open source freeware Excel clone called gnumeric. I have used it for years. It is a 99% clone of Excel. Except for a few small areas, you wouldn't know it wasn't Excel if you didn't know it wasn't Excel... and it is MUCH faster. However, it is an X11 program, which means that you have to load Apple X11 (comes on your OS X install disks). It also requires you to install it (gnumeric) via something like DarwinPorts. So, it takes a bit of effort to get it installed, but once done, it is brilliant.