Convince me to buy iWork.

dauber · Jan 29, 2009

I use openoffice.org -- is there good reason to switch?

Aptmunich · Jan 29, 2009

Nicer interface, arguably better layout tools, much better Presentation suite.

But don't listen to me, download the free demo and do your own comparison.

Apple - iWork - Download a 30-day trial of iWork ’09.

bobtomay · Jan 29, 2009

Yep, only by trying it yourself will you be convinced it's worthy of your cash vs the free suite.

What's right for one, is not necessarily right for the next.

dauber · Jan 29, 2009

Oh, duh....yeah, I'd, uhh....better try it...sorry for the dumb post.

cwa107 · Jan 29, 2009

I have iWork '08, which I received as a gift. It's nothing special in my view, although there are a few nice templates for home users in Numbers. Pages is pretty weak as a wordprocessor. I don't have much use for Keynote, as I don't do many presentations with my Mac (although I may give it a shot someday). In my opinion, OpenOffice.org 3.0 is better rounded for my needs, but yours may differ.

I will give Apple credit on one thing, though... all of the iWork applications startup instantly and are very snappy to use, which is not always the case with Oo

rg.

shades · Jan 29, 2009

While you do that, remember that Pages can do some things that Writer can't do (like true layout capabilities). But Writer has some capabilities that Pages doesn't have.

Keynote will be far better than Impress.

Calc will outshine Numbers if the data is fairly large.

Base (database) does not have a corresponding software in iWork.

Draw will allow some things that Pages does, but it also has more capability that Pages in the strictly drawing category.

So, it all depends on what you need.

If the interface is important, consider NeoOffice. I am part of the Early Access for NO 3.0 and it is very nice, and as a beta it is as stable as OpenOffice.org 3.0

(I use Pages and some Keynote, but not Numbers in iWork 08. I will not be upgrading to 09, as it won't help me that much.)

cwa107 · Jan 29, 2009

Question for you, Shades, if I may....

How do NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org compare these days? I stopped using NeoOffice as I found it to be largely irrelevant with OpenOffice doing a native UI. As I understand it NeoOffice relies pretty heavily on Java, which was one of the factors in its relatively slow performance. Did NeoOffice's mission change when OoO3 was released?

shades · Jan 29, 2009

I have been using OpenOffice.org 3.0 since it went private beta (May-June time period), and NeoOffice since 2.1, but now use NeoOffice 3.0 Early Access (the beta of 3.0; since I paid support to the project, I have access to it). Until EA came out early this month, I had set default to open all MS Office files in O

rg because 3.0 had newer features than NO 2.2.5. But once EA came out, I set NeoOffice to be default for all.

Four major reasons:

1. OO 3.0 does not handle Hebrew (RTL language) properly. NeoOffice handled it correctly in 2.2.5, and now 3.0 EA also handles it correctly. (BTW, O

rg 3.0 on Windows and Linux do handle Hebrew correctly, just not on the Mac). This is critical for me.

2. NeoOffice 3.0 EA is even a little faster than O

rg 3.0 (I just downloaded 3.0.1, and it is faster than 3.0). But both are much better than MS Office. I don't even have MS Office on my MBP (2004 is still on the eMac).

3. Some of the actions of O

rg 3.0 are not consistent, whereas NeoOffice gets right. It feels like a Mac program, rather than a port.

4. NeoOffice 3.0 EA is very stable, as much so as OpenOffice. I don't have to fix things.

Considering that NeoOffice is ported and maintained by two people, this is a phenomenal effort. I had used NO for more than a year, but finally decided to support the effort late last year. Well worth it. The developers are very responsive to problems, questions, features. They are also up front about what they can do and what they cannot do.

I keep both programs up-to-date to see what is happening. Overall, NeoOffice has been a better solution.

cwa107 · Jan 29, 2009

Very cool, thanks for the thorough analysis.

dauber · Feb 13, 2009

Well, I decided to g'ahead and buy iWork 09 after trying the demo. Two things really pushed me to it:

- I love the ease with which you can do charts and graphs with Numbers.
- Numbers has the "COUNTIFS" function I've been just dying to use at work. (We have Office '03 at work, which does NOT have a "COUNTIFS" function in Excel, just the one-dimensional "COUNTIF"). OpenOffice.org's latest version doesn't support it (and since NeoOffice is another version, I'm predicting that doesn't either).

shades · Feb 13, 2009

If you want multiple dimension COUNTIF in Excel 2003, use the SUMPRODUCT, which allows many dimensions. Very powerful.

Or you can use the CSE (Control+Shift + Enter) approach

=($A$2=$B$2: $B$50)*($A$3=$C$2: $C$50)...

Then instead of Enter, hold down Control and Shift and then hit Enter.

GeoffreyS · May 22, 2009

Is there a format painting button in Numbers?
And is there a way to make .xls the default for saving? I find it so inconvenient that every excel spreadsheet I open in Numbers is converted to .numbers, with the necessity of converting it back to an excel file if I want to save any changes.
And while I'm at it, the default location for saving remains "Documents" - which is miles from my financial files tree.
Any advice on becoming a more efficient switcher would be very gratefully received!

Thanks

judderman62 · Jul 28, 2009

I have just downloaded a sheet I produced in excel and when I opened in numbers it advised of several "errors" inc password protection which it stripped out (!!!) and no hyperlinks to web pages or even to other sheets in same workbook. Disappointed to see that. Does anyone know if neo would support such hot linking and are there any screen shots of neo anywhere ?

Not sure how important this is to me yet I may decide I can live without it. thanks

cwa107 · Jul 28, 2009

judderman62 said:
I have just downloaded a sheet I produced in excel and when I opened in numbers it advised of several "errors" inc password protection which it stripped out (!!!) and no hyperlinks to web pages or even to other sheets in same workbook. Disappointed to see that. Does anyone know if neo would support such hot linking and are there any screen shots of neo anywhere ?

Not sure how important this is to me yet I may decide I can live without it. thanks

Well, both NeoOffice and OpenOffice are free. Why not just download one or both and test to see if you like it. If not, you can always just nuke them both and you've lost nothing.

judderman62 · Jul 28, 2009

well on that theme,and thanks for the reply btw, I used to do that a heck of a lot with my windoze machines and read/heard that trialing a lot of software and then removing it could eventually slow down your machine as software did not always remove completely.

is this also applicable to macs ? it's because of this that I had intended not to load as much software to play with that I wasn't sure I'd want to keep as I used to.

cwa107 · Jul 28, 2009

judderman62 said:
well on that theme,and thanks for the reply btw, I used to do that a heck of a lot with my windoze machines and read/heard that trialing a lot of software and then removing it could eventually slow down your machine as software did not always remove completely.

is this also applicable to macs ? it's because of this that I had intended not to load as much software to play with that I wasn't sure I'd want to keep as I used to.

No, that was mostly due to the registry in Windows. There is no registry in OS X. Generally, if you use a program like AppZapper to clean up after a program you trash, everything is gone as a result.

judderman62 · Jul 29, 2009

thanks for that