iWork 06, .Mac, AppleWorks, etc.

[Mac2004]

I currently use AppleWorks 6.2.9 for all of my word processing projects, letter writing, documents, etc. and I really like it. I then purchased iWork 05 when it first came out and I rarely used it as it had many bugs (in my opinion). I now see that iWork 06 is available and that Apple now longer is releasing anymore versions of AppleWorks. What do I do? Do I just stay with AppleWorks for the next year since it works fine for me? Or, do I buy IWork 06 and start learning that? I like the AppleWorks Drawing feature. I mostly type letters and put together newsletters. I'm sure there is going to come a time that AppleWorks will no longer work on my computer and that concerns me somewhat. Is iWork 06 (Pages) easy to learn and is it better and more powerful than AppleWorks?

One other question..... Is iWork 06 a big change from the first version of iWork?

Also, is .Mac worth the $99 or am I just wasting my money? I tried to go on Macworld's web site to see how they rated the most recent version of .Mac but I wasn't able to find anything. How many photos can I post on the Internet with .Mac?

Please help me with any suggestions you may have!!!

To summarize my main questions....

Stay with AppleWorks or move over to IWork (Pages)?

Is .Mac worth it?

Is iWork 06 much better than iWork 05?

 

[theBB]

Stay with AppleWorks or move over to IWork (Pages)?

Is .Mac worth it?

Is iWork 06 much better than iWork 05?

I have played with iWork '06 during the trial version and yeah Pages had a nice interface and good looking templates for flyers etc. If you don't need the templates and the self calculating tables, I'd say save your $80 until Appleworks no longer meet your needs. Who knows, maybe next year they might come up with a full blown spreadsheet program. You don't seem to be in need of the presentation tool, Keynote, so you'd be wasting half of the package anyways.

Never used .Mac, but it seems a bit too pricey at $99.

 

[iGary]

iWork.

Unless you have two computers, fsck .Mac

 

[IJ Reilly]

I think you'll find Pages to be a huge improvement over AppleWorks, at least for word processing. People tend to get fixated by the templates and don't always discover that (1) you don't need to use them, and (2) you can create your own. The latter is an especially useful function. Remember also that iWork includes both Pages and Keynote. At $79 this figures as one of Apple's rare bargain priced products.

As for .Mac, it probably doesn't count as a bargain, but I've found it to be worthwhile. Just spend some time looking over the features and decide for yourself which ones you'd use and how much they'd be worth to you.