iwork 06 or microsoft office?

ill be gettin a mac in october and just wandered which one you guys would recomend? Whats the compatibility between the two programs in relation to mac + pc? all other comments appreciated.
thanks,
srg

iWork only comes with Keynote and Pages while Office comes with Word, Xcel, Powerpoint, MSN, and Entourage. Thats why i went with Office. You have the ability to accomplish more.

neo office is what i used for a couple of years. if you're sure to save your stuff frequently in case of crashes (rare for the most part), then it's a great alternative to M$ office and iwork. very compatible between windows and mac, and in some respects i liked it even better than office for windows (what i was used to prior to going mac). i just bought a new mini off ebay, and it came with office and iwork, but i downloaded neo office anyway.

www.neooffice.org

I'm sold on iWork with Pages and Keynote. Of course, I don't have a spreadsheet, but I don't need one.

yeah i just hered about neo-office, i think i'm gonna use that, it sounds very handy

iWork isn't really an Office replacement.

Pages is like a cross between Word and Publisher (in that it's a template based "document creator", with basic work processing). It's a **** of a step up from TextEdit, and will do fine for writing essays/newsletters/leaflets/screenplays at a much lower cost than Word (and it's a lot easier to make them look a lot nicer); so in that sense it's better for a lot of people, but it's still not a true replacement.

I have no need for Keynote or PowerPoint, so I don't really know the ins and outs of what each one does that the other doesn't (but Keynote looks a **** of a lot nicer, and unless I'm missing something, that is the point of a presentation, no?).

As for compatibility, I *believe* each program can save in and open their Office counterpart's document formats, but it's not perfect (after-all each program has different features, and works differently). If you need to share files between Windows and Mac, then Office (or a "clone") is your best bet.

You'll get a demo of iWork with your Mac. Play around with it, and if you like it there's no reason why you shouldn't get both, as they both have their advantages (and iWork's pretty cheap).

i dont see why you dont get iwork with the mac i mean you get ilife for all your digital needs but not somthing i can just do my homework on ridiculous!

thanks for all your info, more comparisons appreciated!

I use both. I need both. iWork is for different things than Word. I actually never make documents in word, I just edit other people's stuff in it. I use Excel quite a lot.

For publishing, iWork makes the more beatuiful stuff.

All of MS Office makes all of the Macs (three iMacs one MacBook) run very very slow! All have the intel chip by the way.

mmartin1970 said:

All of MS Office makes all of the Macs (three iMacs one MacBook) run very very slow! All have the intel chip by the way.

Click to expand...

That's because the current incarnation of MS Office runs under Rosetta emulation (they were made for PPC Macs). It's not that your Mac is slow, it's that Office is slow under emulation.

If you haven't tried NeoOffice, you'd be remiss not to do so. It's an excellent alternative. Although I have MS Office, I find myself using NeoOffice far more often.