Appleworks vs. Office

[jhomayne]

ok. so i'm looking at getting an ibook for university and obviously want a program that's gonna be suitable for all my length dissertation writing needs.

Now what i was wondering was the extent to which appleworks is compatible with office. i don't want to be having problems when sending files to professors or working on stuff on windows-based pcs. Obviously i'd miss out on powerpoint if i didn't go for office but i don't really want to fork out £100 for something if the pre-installed software will suffice.

any help much appreciated
:)

[ofindsen]

Appleworks is an excellent program and goes MS Office one better by including an excellent database, which Office does not have.
Text and spreadsheet files are compitable with MS Office providing that you use the "Save As" function rather than "Save" and select Word Windows under File Format. There are other formats, such as RTF, which will work as well. You must give your documents a name that is eight or less characters long and you must include the .doc extension for Word and .xlx for Excel. Appleworks has a presentation module but it is not compatible with Powerpoint.

That said, do some test documents and share them with friends using Office for PC. Just to be sure ...

[jknight8907]

Appleworks is an excellent program and goes MS Office one better by including an excellent database, which Office does not have.
Text and spreadsheet files are compitable with MS Office providing that you use the "Save As" function rather than "Save" and select Word Windows under File Format. There are other formats, such as RTF, which will work as well. You must give your documents a name that is eight or less characters long and you must include the .doc extension for Word and .xlx for Excel. Appleworks has a presentation module but it is not compatible with Powerpoint.

That said, do some test documents and share them with friends using Office for PC. Just to be sure ...

Actually, .xls is used for Excel, not .xlx

[nels0360]

I think the only advantage that MS Office will give you is the ability have people revise your work. This is a popular feature during the revision process for many people. You can email them your Word file and they can send it back to you showing all of their changes in red and your original text is kept in tact.

I'm not familiar with AppleWorks, so I don't know if it has this feature. Also, like the other poster mentions, be sure AppleWorks converts to Word perfectly. Compatibility with MS Word is paramount for any word processor, IMO.

[superbovine]

i agree with nels about revision, but also some professor like you to email them assignments etc for submission. since the defacto standard is office, it might be wise to keep it around. there is always pdf though ;) however, there of some ppl i have run into the refuse all eletronic submission, because they don't like to deal with the fact of "well i sent you the wrong file" or "it opens on my computer". if you are purusing a more technical major, i would assume the professor would be more likely to take paper-less homework, but its up to you. £100 is a lot of cash though :(

[JOD8FY]

I would buy Office. It is a really nice piece of software and well worth the £100. If you are planning on sharing your files with Windows, there really is no substitute for Office.

Give AppleWorks a try, but if you buy Office, you won't regret the purchase.

Best wishes,
JOD8FY

[Horrortaxi]

If you only have to submit things, then it doesn't matter what you use. AppleWorks and TextEdit both will save as pdf or rtf. If you need to receive revisions back then you'll probably want .doc, though rtf should still work--AppleWorks and TextEdit will save as doc too.

I haven't had big problems with incompatibility between AppleWorks and Word when the document only contained text. Letters, research papers, etc should all be okay. I've had documents with columns, special formatting, tables, and images get messed up in the conversion.

Microsoft Office isn't going anywhere, so try to do what you need to do with what you've got. If you find that you need Office, it'll still be there. If you don't need it, you won't have wasted any money <horrortaxi rant> and Microsoft won't have their hooks into you.</horrortaxi rant>

Maybe if you wait long enough, OpenOffice.org will have their most excellent (and free) product running natively in OS X.

[arnette]

No comparison. MS Office is the far superior program. And it's the de facto standard for business.

Apple as all but dropped support from AppleWorks as there have been no worthy updates to it in quite a while. Plus, you're limited to editing only your fellow Mac people's files. With Office, you increase your compatibility with every one else by a tremendous amount.

Granted, Office is bloated and clunky most of the time, it's a necessary evil.

[irmongoose]

Screw Microsoft and download Office. :D



irmongoose

[Horrortaxi]

Screw Microsoft and download Office. :D

No, don't do it! I do like the "stick it to the man" aspect of stealing Microsoft's software, but <another rant> if you use Office, Windows, IE, or Media Player--even if you didn't pay for them--Microsoft still wins. You are using their product. You are a slave to .doc, .xls, .wma, .wmv, .net, passport, and their retarded ass idea of html. They lose a few bucks through your theft of the product, but they win your soul as you use their formats. I think there's an "off the books" Microsoft agenda--we joke about them ruling the world, but remember the East India Company and Adolph Hitler. They were both good and harmless things for a while. Ask yourself why Microsoft would want so much control over the format your data is in. It goes beyond business and controlling just for the sake of controlling is a very scary thing.

[irmongoose]

Mmm... I like that kind of cynicism.



irmongoose

[Savage Henry]

www.openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)

Hell, even my Dad uses it on his eMac....

[netytan]

Npoooooo lol ;). Now dont take this the wrong way - im a big fan of open source ideals and an active member of the opensource community.

But open office for mac isn't the best by any standards. Yes it works, but its hardly Mac-like. And lets face it guys, why would you want to buy a mac and have to put up with an emulated, under developed user interface? God, even by Windows standards its petter bad!

So, if you can get around it :p get around it and get Office, or stick with Appleworks if you can.

But, like Horrortaxi said, when a full port of open office is abailable of OSX, this should rock.

Just my $0.02, have fun!

Mark.

[jhomayne]

soo.. anyone wanna lend me £100? :p

[netytan]

If i had the money to spare then of course i would. However, backpacking and all ;).

[jhomayne]

If i had the money to spare then of course i would. However, backpacking and all ;).
aww.. thanks anyway.. ;)

:D

[dcollierp]

If you can put up with slow load times and a a lake of scrolling, NeoOffice J which runs natively in OS X os okay.

[SwitchingSoon]

Appleworks needs some improvement. Go with office.....(if you haven't already ;) )

[Horrortaxi]

Appleworks needs some improvement.
To it's interface maybe. It doesn't look like an OS X app. It looks its age. I'm all in favor of updating the looks of AppleWorks. But as far as functionality is concerned, there aren't any problems with AppleWorks.

Personally I don't think it's a bad thing that they haven't updated it several years. It's an office app--how do you improve word processing and spreadsheets? You can't. You can add features that nobody needs or uses, then convince them they need to buy the "upgrade", but that's not very honest and in a monopoly-free industry it would never happen.

If Apple updated the looks of AppleWorks ya'll would be singing its praises.

[amake]

Before you even consider buying Office, give NeoOffice/J (http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php) a try. It's free, and is compatible with all Office filetypes.

[Grimace]

Buying Office is a good long term investment. People complain about Macs not being compatible. Using Office with its file extensions (.doc .xls) disproves this. Using a different program may work for you, but there is always going to be someone on the other end to screw it up or not be able to open it. Normally I say screw MS, but if you are in academia - it is just better to pay the money and get office.

[AmigoMac]

What to choose, I want to give OpenOffice/Neooffice a try, just want to receive some considerations about what to choose, running on JAVA or runnin on X11? Thanks...

[wdlove]

I never have used Appleworks. Microsoft Office was always considered to be the superior product. Started out with Word in 1983 and have been using it ever since.

[oreo]

I've got office, just because I'm going to university & I know the college only uses wintel machines & we have to email assignments, which have to be in a MS format. I have to say it does look better than the windows version.

[Ups85]

I just got Office 2004 for the mac, and it is a thousand times better than office for the PC. Its definatly worth the education price. If you do go for Appleworks though, and you need powerpoint, you should consider getting keynote. It is supposedly compatable with powerpoint.

[kanker]

soo.. anyone wanna lend me £100? :pHave you checked to see if your university has a deal with MS? There are a lot of schools out there that have deal where you can get Office for just a couple of bucks, at least they do here in the States.

[jsw]

I agree that you should, if you can afford it, get MS Office. And don't rip it off. Dude, that's just wrong. The student price is a phenomenal deal for what you get. Regardless of what you think of MS, the Mac division is staffed with some pretty cool people. And they've made Office 2004 a great product.

It will work with the 95% of the world running it on a PC. It'll do anything you need it to do. The new features in Word are great if you're note-taking on a PB.

I'm a Mac person, through and through. But I appreciate a good product at a good value, and MS Office is just that. If you get something else, that one time where it needs to be in Word format (or whatever) and your open-source app doesn't quite work, and you're late with your project... that £100 would seem like a bargain.

As to those who say that Appleworks would be praised if Apple'd just update the GUI:

They aren't going to. They haven't really worked on it for years. They don't need to. Newbies/non-demanding users are fine with it. Demanding users use Office. If Apple came out with a kick-ass version of Appleworks, demanding users would still use Office.

But... agreed, it does the job if you don't need to work with others. If you're just writing your own papers, you'll be fine with Appleworks. You don't need the power of Office. But you'll likely need it to collaborate with others.

[jhomayne]

Have you checked to see if your university has a deal with MS? There are a lot of schools out there that have deal where you can get Office for just a couple of bucks, at least they do here in the States.
yeah that's what i'm hoping.

i think i'm gonna leave office off my order and see how it works out.

it's cheaper on amazon anyways..


EDIT: yeah. i wouldn't think off ripping it off. In my experience, ripping off always leads to problems down the line, whether they be technical or legal ;)

[mhar4]

It depends on your needs as to whether Appleworks is a better choice than Office. For no nonsense word processing, Appleworks is great. Simple, easy to use, no auto-formatting crap. Word is almost a desktop publishing app, and if you need all that stuff, then go for it. Appleworks has one unique feature which is unmatched for academic writing and that is the ability to create footnotes or endnotes in Chicago Manual of Style or MLA automatically. Type in author, title, publisher etc and it formats the entry for you. That one feature keeps me a dedicated Appleworks fan.

For additional features you can check out Silk for nice Quartz rendered text and Grammarian Pro X, for a greatly enhanced spelling and grammar checker.