iWork 08 or Office 2008

[blasto333]

I know this is probably the wrong place to ask this....but I have been using office for a long time because it is the defacto standard. (I am using office 2001 and it is just too slow)

Although I like iWork 08 ( i have tried it). I get worried about compatibility. All of my assignments for school require .doc submissions, powerpoint, and excel files.

How is the interoperability and reading and writing of these formats. (I have not done extensive testing!)

 

[hodgjy]

Ok, not to sound rude, but I'll take my turn giving the standard "Please use the forum search function because this is a very common question" response.

It has been discussed a lot. Just do a search

 

[KershMan]

The bottom line is if you have a need of Office, which you state you do, just buy office. The student version is not that more expensive to iWork and you will have no issues. iWork does a poor job with Excel and Word documents with lots of macros, etc. PowerPoint and Keynote I have never really had problems with, but you will with Word and Excel. Neooffice is probably better at this than iWork, at least for me.

But, I keep a version of office for this very reason. Work and other documents that I need to make sure transfer 100%, I need to rely on Office. For better or worse.

 

[phoxrenvatio]

both are good, both have to convert to be Win-compatible... so whichever one suits you

PS- btw, if you have a lot of Excel stuff, get office. Numbers just isn't there yet.
but if you do a lot of powerpoint or documents, and not too much excel, get iWork '08; Pages and Keynote are MUCH better than Word/PowerPoint.

 

[kvasir]

I absolutely love Pages and Keynote. I use Keynote everyday in my classroom and the kids are fascinated by all the neat transitions (silly, I know, but trying to keep their attention is getting harder with video games and television). Plus, it seems much easier to me to create a presentation with Keynote than PowerPoint. I will say that Pages is great too, but I work with some files that look funny, especially ones with borders, pictures, ect.

I got Office 2008 as part of the Best Friday Deal and got it for free after I sold Office 2004. I'm in the middle of the iWork trial and plan to purchase it just for Keynote. I do like Office, but I'll say iWork grows on me every day. Honestly, if you need compatibility, Office is the way to go. With an education discount, both are relatively well priced. I no longer speak from a student's point of view though!