11-24-2011, 09:21 PM

What do you guys recommend? I'm not sure what the preference is and, more importantly, the better price. I see amazon has microsoft office for 69.99

Amazon.com: Office for Mac Home & Student 2011 - 1 Pack: Mac OS X: Software

Is that a good price? Would you guys recommend that over iWork? I'm not looking to do any labor intensive stuff on my home CPU? I just need fairly basic word processing and spreadsheet programs.

11-24-2011, 10:37 PM

Download the trial version and test it out. They are both have trial versions last time I checked.

11-24-2011, 11:22 PM

Is that a good price? Would you guys recommend that over iWork? I'm not looking to do any labor intensive stuff on my home CPU? I just need fairly basic word processing and spreadsheet programs.

Yes, that's a very good price. I paid $119.99 for the 3 pack version of Office 2011 Home and Student version but that was some time ago.

As far as choosing between the iWork applications and Office... if you need 100% Office compatibility for your documents, then you should buy Office. However, if that's not important buy Pages and Numbers. Both have been updated for Lion and are available from the Mac App store for $19.99 each.

Purchases from the Mac App store can be installed on all the Macs you own without paying an additional fee. Not so for Office.

And as Crimson recommended, download a trial version of each to see how well you like them before choosing.

11-25-2011, 02:05 AM

I have gotten both. I've used Microsoft Office for Windows (Believe it was the 2007 Version) for about 4 years now and I got so used to it. I cannot get used to pages at all and that goes for Microsoft Office too. It's a big change for me. I'm having problems with both not formatting to how I had saved it.

11-25-2011, 08:13 AM

Hmm...I didn't realize tehre was a trial version. I'll check them out. I'm leaning towards office though since I will be sharing documents with my work computer which runs windows. Thanks for the help guys.

11-25-2011, 08:26 AM

In the spirit of our "Microsoft Free" home, we went with Pages and Keynote. I have two high school teenagers who need to bounce back and forward between Apple products at home and MS stuff at school. We haven't run in to any compatibility issues. For $40 it's hard to beat the two apps from Apple.

11-25-2011, 10:45 AM

I don't quite like the way office looks and works on the Mac (haven't tried the very latest version though). For some basic charts, presentations and documents iWork is fantastic and I love working with it. Way easier to create amazing things with :-) If I keep documents simple, sharing with Windows users and exporting into Office format works well.

However - if you are writing scientific documents with heaps of formulas and such you might have to resort to Office. No good support for this on iWork.

Hope that helps!

11-25-2011, 04:03 PM

Office 2011 is a great program and the best suite available. Jump in and buy at that price.

11-25-2011, 07:12 PM

That is an excellent price, I also paid 119.99. I have had a total of 3 MS office systems and only 1 Mac MS office, and I love 2011. There is an awesome feature that you can record and make a document or add to a powerpoint at the same time. This is great if you are using for school and going to be having to listen to a lecture or for whatever reason you want to record and make notes at the same time. I have not used iWork so I cannot speak to that, but I definitely think MS office is worth it!

11-25-2011, 08:15 PM

I use Office and like it a lot, but be warned there is a learning curve that I did not expect as it is quite different from the Windows version. I got the Pages and Numbers for my daughter but both of us found them poor in comparison to Office. Being cheap (me not the software), rather than get my daughter Office I downloaded OpenOffice which is free and is really a very good Office type application, certainly worth looking at whether it is what you need before you spend...

11-25-2011, 09:49 PM

Thanks guys. I bought it on amazon for 69.99 for a download. Question:

I see that I now have an iso on my computer. Can I burn that to a CD for backup later on? I was thinking it'd be good to have a backup disk on hand just in case...otherwise I can always redownload it from amazon.com

11-25-2011, 10:13 PM

Yes, by all means burn the iso to a CD. Use Disk Utility. And don't lose your product activation id. BTW, burning the iso to a CD will create an install disk.

11-25-2011, 11:41 PM

Perfect thanks. Doing that now.

11-26-2011, 12:30 AM

I prefer iWork, but after starting work here at Uni, I have discovered that there are a few functions in Numbers that just don't exist. The problem is that these very nonexistent functions are the ones I need! No choice but to go with MS Office. Both work very well, however, and you won't be disappointed with either choice.