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Word vs Pages
- Thread starter tim1978
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nagromme
macrumors G5
Pages is far better than Word.
Word is far better than Pages.
It all depends on the KIND of document you want to make. Pages is more for small documents that look really good, and is both cheaper and easier to use. Word has a million more features and is suitable for more heavy-duty use, at the price of being more complicated to use.
And also, if you need to read Word documents from other people, you can do that with Pages--but you can do it better with Word. (I do that all the time and have never needed Word--but if you're talking complex, formatted documents, the "real thing" is the most compatible.)
They are not the same kind of program and do not directly compete with each other.
Word is far better than Pages.
It all depends on the KIND of document you want to make. Pages is more for small documents that look really good, and is both cheaper and easier to use. Word has a million more features and is suitable for more heavy-duty use, at the price of being more complicated to use.
And also, if you need to read Word documents from other people, you can do that with Pages--but you can do it better with Word. (I do that all the time and have never needed Word--but if you're talking complex, formatted documents, the "real thing" is the most compatible.)
They are not the same kind of program and do not directly compete with each other.
FelixDerKater
macrumors 68040
Microsoft Word is the best available word processing application avaiable, regardless of what platform you are on.
Toe
macrumors 65816
If you need to exchange a lot of documents with other people, and edit those documents back and forth, then you most likely need Word. As of now, Pages does not natively open and save Word documents (it imports and exports them, but that is more difficult and not perfect).
If you need to get writing done and don't want to have to fight your software to produce what seems like easy tasks, then Pages is far easier and friendlier, being a real Mac application. One benefit of Word is that it is more mature, supporting things like non-contiguous selections and post-pasting follow-up actions. But many times you will want to do something that seems easy, but it will take half an hour to figure out how Microsoft wants you to do it.
If you need to do complex page layout, either program will work. Pages will be a thousand times easier to get the same complex things done but you may have difficulty sharing the results with Word users. Unless they don't mind getting PDFs... in which case, again, Pages will be easier and more reliable.
If you need to get writing done and don't want to have to fight your software to produce what seems like easy tasks, then Pages is far easier and friendlier, being a real Mac application. One benefit of Word is that it is more mature, supporting things like non-contiguous selections and post-pasting follow-up actions. But many times you will want to do something that seems easy, but it will take half an hour to figure out how Microsoft wants you to do it.
If you need to do complex page layout, either program will work. Pages will be a thousand times easier to get the same complex things done but you may have difficulty sharing the results with Word users. Unless they don't mind getting PDFs... in which case, again, Pages will be easier and more reliable.
In my experience Pages does an adequate job at most word processing tasks, and exports/imports with near perfection. That being said, each user will have a different experience and for some it may be an unsatisfactory alternative. These users need Word; if you don't, Pages is awesome.
In my experience Pages does an adequate job at most word processing tasks, and exports/imports with near perfection. That being said, each user will have a different experience and for some it may be an unsatisfactory alternative. These users need Word; if you don't, Pages is awesome.
As previous posters have pointed out, it depends on what you are doing.
Word tends to crash on me at bad times, on all three of my machines. It also likes to 'get in the way', it thinks it knows what you want to do and most of the time it's wrong. That being said it does have nice features, a programmable autocomplete, grammar checking, etc. Word is also a necessary evil, nearly every time I collaborate with a peecee user, all they know/have is Word.
Pages excells at layout, formatting, and document presentation. Real time text wrapping and object alignment guides are amazing. Pages' handling of paragraph styles is far superior to Word's.
Both programs tend to get bogged down with large documents and embedded pictures (1.33 PB, 768 Mb). For instance when scolling a ten page lab report with figures (not really all that large a document even), Word just shows lots of blank space for the figures and takes a while to display them once you've stopped scrolling. Pages on the other hand will show you everything in the document as you scoll by, but will move like molasses.
Pages is not ready ( and possibly not yet intended) to replace Word. Give it two more versions and we'll see. I've switched to writing my documents in TextEdit (lightweight and fast) without any formatting other than paragraph breaks, then doing the layout in Pages.
Last thing, I recently downloaded a trial version of Mellel and it looks like it could be a contender to become my primary word processor.
Word tends to crash on me at bad times, on all three of my machines. It also likes to 'get in the way', it thinks it knows what you want to do and most of the time it's wrong. That being said it does have nice features, a programmable autocomplete, grammar checking, etc. Word is also a necessary evil, nearly every time I collaborate with a peecee user, all they know/have is Word.
Pages excells at layout, formatting, and document presentation. Real time text wrapping and object alignment guides are amazing. Pages' handling of paragraph styles is far superior to Word's.
Both programs tend to get bogged down with large documents and embedded pictures (1.33 PB, 768 Mb). For instance when scolling a ten page lab report with figures (not really all that large a document even), Word just shows lots of blank space for the figures and takes a while to display them once you've stopped scrolling. Pages on the other hand will show you everything in the document as you scoll by, but will move like molasses.
Pages is not ready ( and possibly not yet intended) to replace Word. Give it two more versions and we'll see. I've switched to writing my documents in TextEdit (lightweight and fast) without any formatting other than paragraph breaks, then doing the layout in Pages.
Last thing, I recently downloaded a trial version of Mellel and it looks like it could be a contender to become my primary word processor.
homerjward
macrumors 68030
microsoft word sucks, as does windows, but unlike windows there's no way around word. some things are "100% compatible" but the only true thing that always works is word. sorry. pages is a word processor, technically i suppose, but if you wanted to compare it to a m$ app it'd have to be publisher *shudders at thought of publisher*