I'm going to be Switching soon, and I'm thinking about buying Mac Office 2004. Is it worth it if what I'm mostly going to be doing it typing up notes for class and stuff? How is Appleworks? How compatible is it with Microsoft Office (on Windows). I'm most likely going to be transfering documents back and forth from iBook to Windows machine. Thanks for any help.
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Appleworks???
- Thread starter bigpumbaa
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For basic text notes you can use Apple's 'TextEdit' app which comes free with any OS install. It's not the greatest app ever known to Mackind, but will read / save as rtf and doc formats, although without a lot of the formatting and styles Word offers.
Appleworks will do a little more, inclusing save as various Orifice formats, but really it isn't up to much. If you get it free (as you do with iBooks I think) then try it for a while, but I wouldn't jump into buying it.
You could also try either OpenOffice or (forgets the name) one of the other cheap / free alternatives.
I guess it depends how much detail and formatting you are going to be having in your notes, and whether maintaining all that between PC and MAc is a high prority.
Appleworks will do a little more, inclusing save as various Orifice formats, but really it isn't up to much. If you get it free (as you do with iBooks I think) then try it for a while, but I wouldn't jump into buying it.
You could also try either OpenOffice or (forgets the name) one of the other cheap / free alternatives.
I guess it depends how much detail and formatting you are going to be having in your notes, and whether maintaining all that between PC and MAc is a high prority.
I would buy the student version of Office. It is 100 GBP in the UK, probably means it is 100 USD in the US. It is a full version off Office, except it says "Student Edition" when you start it up.
If people send you Word or Excel docs, it will be a pain to have to convert all the time.
If people send you Word or Excel docs, it will be a pain to have to convert all the time.
I got from work MS office 2004, just for read the possible office files that our customer will send, I do prefer PDF but if for you the formatting is a priority get office, Open office is fine with MS word docs if you don't mind losing some formatting and layout, I have had when importing headers and footers, there is also neooffice, it's a java port of openoffice with an *aqua* interface and you don't have to deal with X11 if that's a problem for you, I got appleworks with my iBook but I use it for special layout papers and send them as PDF, that rocks 
and use Openoffice/neooffice for the same, depends on the mood... in extreme case where someone requests a doc file with a very hard format/layout I go to MS word, send the Doc file and the PDF.
and use Openoffice/neooffice for the same, depends on the mood... in extreme case where someone requests a doc file with a very hard format/layout I go to MS word, send the Doc file and the PDF.