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iWork '08 vs. NeoOffice ?

J

jrmontag

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 6, 2006
11
0
Howdy folks. I'd like to hear from anyone who has experience with both the new iWork and NeoOffice... I'm finally prepared to deviate from the uber expensive Office Suite (as I prepared to buy my next Mac notebook), and I'm wondering if I should invest the cash in iWork or just go with the open source suite.

All thoughts appreciated!
 
hard to comment on iwork 08 since i have no hands on experience. AFAIK
1. neooffice is free
2. keynote can make some really nice presentations
3. iwork is 4 times larger than neooffice in size
4. none of them can replace M$ Office when industry standard is involved.
 
Well

I used MS 2004 since it has been out. I have been using Neo for a while just to get away from MS. I eventually had to reinstall MS because Neo was still in infancy to me.

I look at pro formas most of the time or other not extremely complex stuff... So now the only thing on my computer is iWork, which I have been very happy with.
 
There are two advantages of NeoOffice. For one it is free. It also comes with a real spreadsheet (Numbers is a sad joke).

Other than that, Neooffice (and anything OpenOffice-derived) is awful.
NeoOffice is slow, bloated, and buggy. It looks ugly, and is not integrated with the rest of the OS as well as most Mac programs are. If you want to get any work done - don't bother.

As far as iWork goes, Keynote is fantastic - it leaves Powerpoint in the dust.
Pages is a capable program - unless you write scientific papers, or have to open Word documents with complex formatting.
Numbers is useless - it lacks essential features like error bars, and in some cases feels slower than non-Universal Excel.

Myself, I use Mellel as a Word repacement - I still have to find something that will replace Excel.
 
Oh really now, we KNOW you don't like Numbers, sucks to be you right? For the rest of us though, error bars are NOT essential AT ALL. Heck, I have a number of friends studying for MEng degrees and NONE of them use Excel. Its all about 'proper' graphic software for them and I've been told on numerous occasions that Excel just doesn't cut it for them.

I know what error bars are, I know what they are useful for and well, they don't NEED to be in Numbers. On the other hand, Numbers is excellent for my use and I'm sure there are LOTS of other satisfied customers and you are VERY much in the minority.

Oh and re; Pages and endnotes. I'm studying for a degree where footnotes are vital (life or death...) and iWork is doing fine for me....I don't see your problem. It amazes me how much people whine when a piece of software isn't targeted directly at them!!
 
I use a mixture of Pages and NeoOffice for school, mainly Pages. NeoOffice is slower to start up, but until October, Pages has no advanced grammar checking.

Keynote is awesome, and I cannot review Numbers as I have no need for it so cannot test it in any useful way.
 
unknown87 said:
...
It amazes me how much people whine when a piece of software isn't targeted directly at them!!
Click to expand...

Isn't that the truth? :D

Compared to MS Office, it looks as though someone couldn't survive with either NeoOffice/OpenOffice or iWork '08 but they both do the job quite well.

For word processing, presentations, and spread sheets, either will do but the more graphical the situation, the better off you are with iWork. NeoOffice, like OpenOffice, follows MS Office closely in what can be done.

It's quick and generally simple to get things done in Pages, especially if you've worked with any page layout application. It's certainly easier to get things done than it is with MS Word.

Presentations are not only easier with Keynote than PowerPoint but they're quite a bit better, although you might have to back off on certain features, if you plan to export to PowerPoint or NeoOffice.

Numbers is new and it's very capable but doesn't include some esoteric features. It'll be interesting to see how it grows in capabilities but it's already graphics heavy, as you might expect from Apple, having seen Keynote and Pages.

I find it better and quicker to use iWork than to use NeoOffice but both work. One consideration for NeoOffice is that the developers closely follow OpenOffice and integrate changes quite often but it's still not a slick application suite and it doesn't leverage Mac OS X as well as it should.
 
When I get Leopard I'll be getting iWork as well. NeoOffice is just too slow.

OpenOffice keep promising a Aqua native version of their software and I'm keeping an eye on that because it should run decently with a bit of luck, but currently I'm using NeoOffice. It's not only slow starting up, but in general.

For that reason alone I'll be purchasing iWork when the time comes. For what I need, it's more than ample.
 
I too have used both. First impressions of iWork 08 is very favourable .. :)

I have already dumped Microsoft Office 2004 and NeoOffice ...:cool:
 
I really like iWork 08. For whatever reason, it seems much nicer to work with than iWork 06.

Alot of people are complaining about numbers, but I like it. I find it does exactly what I need it to do. Nothing too complicated, but still handles formulas and what not with ease.

I prefer iWork 08 to Neo Office, but there is no replacement for MS Office. Even under rosetta, I would rather run MS Office just because it is the standard.
 
I kind of expected iWork 08 to run faster than 06, especially as I thought 06 ran under Rosetta, but I haven't seen any difference. :confused:

It looks very promising from the trial, but I don't know if I'd use enough of the features or anything like that to warrant buying it now.
 
Osarkon said:
I kind of expected iWork 08 to run faster than 06, especially as I thought 06 ran under Rosetta, but I haven't seen any difference. :confused:

It looks very promising from the trial, but I don't know if I'd use enough of the features or anything like that to warrant buying it now.
Click to expand...

Instant Alpha in Keynote is awesome, and I love the new Pages toolbar. It was worth it :)
 
Osarkon said:
I kind of expected iWork 08 to run faster than 06, especially as I thought 06 ran under Rosetta, but I haven't seen any difference. :confused:
Click to expand...

iWork '06 is a universal binary too. In fact, I think iLife '06 and iWork '06 were the first officially released univeral binaries by Apple.
 
chrisgeleven said:
iWork '06 is a universal binary too. In fact, I think iLife '06 and iWork '06 were the first officially released univeral binaries by Apple.
Click to expand...

Ah cool. That would explain it. I was properly puzzled.

In that case, iWork doesn't run that fast does it? Everything else is quite snappy with 1gig of ram, iWork really...isn't.
 
Osarkon said:
Ah cool. That would explain it. I was properly puzzled.

In that case, iWork doesn't run that fast does it? Everything else is quite snappy with 1gig of ram, iWork really...isn't.
Click to expand...

The initial releases never run quickly and about 5 weeks later, they have an update that fixes bugs and performance problems, but they'll never be incredibly fast.
 
The general consensus here is that iWork is generally a better thing that OOo/NeoOffice. If I may ask, is anyone concerned about data portability on a larger scale?

It's going to be difficult at best to share .pages files with the rest of the world, and I'm sure everyone is going to want their data in a format that they feel will last -- I can see .doc or .odt being around for a decade, but the .pages format seems to change with every version of the software. Having already done one mass conversion from .doc to .odt, I'd hate to have to do the same at some point for .pages.

That's why I've been using NeoOffice in the ISO-certified OpenDocument format. Even though the file specs for Apple's iWork are XML-based, it would seem to deviate from these principals in the long term.

I've long since dumped MS Office for OOo/NeoOffice, so I have no ties to the MS suite. Although I find iWork's programs to be more intuitive, snappier, and perhaps easier to use than NeoOffice, I'm still not sold on upgrading just yet if for nothing alone than the file format.
 
I bought iWork '08 for Numbers, the first 2 simple Excel spreadsheets I tried didn't work. The first 1 loaded but the formatting was screwed, the 2nd crashed Numbers.

I'm starting to think the only reason I'll ever have to get rid of Microsoft Office v.X 2004 will be v.X 2008.
 
risc said:
I bought iWork '08 for Numbers, the first 2 simple Excel spreadsheets I tried didn't work. The first 1 loaded but the formatting was screwed, the 2nd crashed Numbers.

I'm starting to think the only reason I'll ever have to get rid of Microsoft Office v.X 2004 will be v.X 2008.
Click to expand...

Oef... the program worked quite nice here, maybe something went wrong with your installation?

p.s. http://guides.macrumors.com/iWork_-_Pages_-_Wish_List :):)
 
I haven't played with iWork '08 at all, but I am a fan of NeoOffice, and it's freeware. I have no issues using NeoOffice at work with all the other computers using Office. I am happy with it.
 
i have just got the iwork 09' and its looking all good to me so far, but i have discovered one problem ..that tables are not supported in pages...and they convert tables into text frames ..

which is not a big problem for me, but just wondering, if people using windows would still be able to view those tables or 'textframes' once i send the document to them?

im a uni student and occasionally i need to include tables in my essays/exercises..so it would be great if someone could answer my question!

Cheers!:)
 
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