ipages vs office for mac 2008

i have been searching and have not been able to find anything.. i was trying to figure out which would be better to buy, iwork or ms office for mac 2008, which did most of you buy was it one or the other or did you see a need to have both and what are the pros and cons of each.

thank for you help in advance.

I bought iWork '08, I really like it. And I think it works much better.
The interface is much cleaner, and really simple. The inspector window makes everything streamlined.
Keynote looks professional compared to Powerpoint, in fact Steve Jobs uses it in his Keynote speeches...

also check out NEOoffice

i have them both. there is not really a need to have them both either. if you are in a windows/microsoft enviroment you may want to go with office just for ease of integrating with everybody else.

I personally like pages over word, excel over numbers and can go either way on powerpoint vs keynote

Or you could buy iWork for its better designed templates and ease of use.

If you find you need features commonly found in office, the free NeoOffice also does everything most people need from Office, and even opens the latest office 2007 file formats

I will be going to college where most people use mac's, and some people use windows. How well does NeoOffice and or iWork integrate with other Office users. Can you set default file types to be that of Windows so its not a pain each time you save/ open a new doc? Or should I just go with Office 08 for Mac to keep things simple. Any other downsides of Neo, iWork, or Office? Thanks for the help, and sorry if it sounds like I'm hijacking the thread just wanted some elaboration.

Zach

Well this is my opinion

For presentations, keynote can save to ppt, but in its native format its presentation transitions make powerpoint look lame

Excel - I am not a heavy user but - then I am a designer - not a number cruncher.

Word - while its OK, I find it cumbersome, NeoOffoice can do all the stuff word can and easily open and save to word, while I haven't used pages, I have seen that its layout, again, makes word look dull.

Anyhow, see for yourself, you can try out NeoOffice and trial iWork for free - if they are not what you are comfortable with - then by all means buy Office

rich6490 said:

I will be going to college where most people use mac's, and some people use windows. How well does NeoOffice and or iWork integrate with other Office users. Can you set default file types to be that of Windows so its not a pain each time you save/ open a new doc? Or should I just go with Office 08 for Mac to keep things simple. Any other downsides of Neo, iWork, or Office? Thanks for the help, and sorry if it sounds like I'm hijacking the thread just wanted some elaboration.

Zach

Click to expand...

While iWork 2008 will save to Office document format, it does not do so by default. That option has to be chosen each time. A pain. But, all in all, it's a well designed program and "Pages" (WP) is about the only inexpensive OS X program that I have found that can come close to MS Publisher for layout options - if you're into doing bulletins, flyers, etc.

NeoOffice will save to Office format by default, however, unless you plan on using everything including the kitchen sink, it's a bulky program using resources and drive space.

MS Office 2008 - still the best in my humble opinion. If you're attending school, chances are you can purchase a copy at a good discount from the school's bookstore. Normal discount price on the web for the student version varies anywhere from $129 up. Shop around.

If you just need a simple word processor program that will save to *.DOC by default and is easy to use, I suggest you try "Bean". It's free, small, and has many of the same options available that iWork 2008 Pages has.

Regards.

(Not to old a thread to resurrect I hope)

I use Office '08 for work and oo.o at home (on my PC)

iwork be ****ed.

Of course, I was trained on a Windows compy, so making me learn pages would be unprofitable.

The only thing Mac freaks (Can I say that here?, there's more of you than me!) really insist is better is Keynote, telling me my feeble powerpoint presentations are pale & weak.



TAKE A MEMO!

officeguy said:

(Not to old a thread to resurrect I hope)

I use Office '08 for work and oo.o at home (on my PC)

iwork be ****ed.

Of course, I was trained on a Windows compy, so making me learn pages would be unprofitable.

The only thing Mac freaks (Can I say that here?, there's more of you than me!) really insist is better is Keynote, telling me my feeble powerpoint presentations are pale & weak.



TAKE A MEMO!

Click to expand...

Trained on a Windows comp?

I have been certified in all of Office 2003 and I would take iWork over Office any day.

*Why?* Well, Office 2003 has limited features when compared to iWork. For example, I don't even have to say it but, Keynote beats Powerpoint down in visual aspects of a slideshow and also the functionality. And, Numbers has better looking graphs and I like the program interface better than Excel. Pages seems to have a simpler, more direct user interface than any version of Word ever has had.

And as most of you know, the Office 2007/2008 interface is really dumbed down compared to what it was in 2003. I don't know about the rest of you guys but, that makes it hard for me to work with and manipulate a document.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Word 2008 for Mac doesn't use the awful "ribbon" interface that the Windows version I use at works has.

I have both and tend to use Word and Excel for most things just because I have to go back and forth from my office PC. If that were not the case I'd be happy to just use iWork. Actually, if I didn't need anything special I'd just use one of the free office suites.

I have been certified in all of Office 2003 and I would take iWork over Office any day.

*Why?* Well, Office 2003 has limited features when compared to iWork. For example, I don't even have to say it but, Keynote beats Powerpoint down in visual aspects of a slideshow and also the functionality. And, Numbers has better looking graphs and I like the program interface better than Excel. Pages seems to have a simpler, more direct user interface than any version of Word ever has had.

And as most of you know, the Office 2007/2008 interface is really dumbed down compared to what it was in 2003. I don't know about the rest of you guys but, that makes it hard for me to work with and manipulate a document.

Click to expand...

There's a 2003 now?

I remember having a tantrum when a previous Office updated to 2000 & it had that paperclip (I had some fun with Einstein, then broke the printer & refused to continue work)

My experience with iWork is limited, & Mac Store Guy was happy enough to sell me Office for Mac.

It's a comfort zone thing.


I bought Office 08, and I stand by that, so I vote buy that.

TAKE A MEMO!

I personally cant get over how great NeoOffice is. I Love it. It does everything.

I have both, I like some of the templates in iWork, but they both do the same thing. I have noticed some formatting issues when I save a file in iWork as a .doc file and open it on a windows machine, it sometimes goofs up the formatting of the page.

INTELligent said:

*Why?* Well, Office 2003 has limited features when compared to iWork.

Click to expand...

This has got to be a joke right? Seriously?

For the record eye candy != features.

Office by far is a much more robust and developed suite and definitely has more power and features than iWork.

I have Office '08 and iWork '08, as well as Office '07 on my Windows laptop.

I almost never have to do spreadsheets so Excel/Numbers will almost never be found on my Dock. I do a lot of word processing and presentations, so I'm a vet of Office for Windows and Mac and have been using iWork for a little over two years now.

I like iWork '08 and Office '08 a lot but for different reasons; if I am doing a document that I know will be sent around to multiple people who use Office, I will probably do it in Office--if I'm doing a document for me, or if the recipient(s) will be using iWork, I will do it in iWork. Yes, I can export from iWork to Office document formats, but I've had minor issues in the past w/ formatting that I don't care to have to fix later.

On average I spent maybe 80% of my time in Pages/Keynote, and the rest in Word '08--I rarely use Powerpoint '08 although it's an excellent presentation program, no complaints but it does look 'dated' compared to Keynote.

Pages is a little cumbersome for someone who is an Office vet and uses shortcut keys like mad. Most of the keys are the same but some of the ones you would least expect are moved elsewhere (CTRL-R in Office is now Command+Shift+} ). Yeah I know, I'm picky...

Office '08 has a lot of things Pages doesn't, like Equation Editor which allows you to enter math symbols directly into the word doc. You can use Grapher or install LaTeX to do the same in Pages, but it's a lot easier in Office. I also find the grammar checker in Word is a lot more robust than that of Proofreader in Pages.

If you're a college student, you can get by w/ iWork just fine but Office is pretty much the bread/butter and will have everything you might ever need it to do. The last Mac version of Office I bought was in '03 (Office X) and it lasted me up until this latest version. I've had iWork since the 2005 version and it's gotten a lot better, but could use some improvements to be on-par with Office.

In my opinion iWork is a better value than Office, but Office is still king.