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iWork or Office

I cringe when I open Word documents in Pages. All the paragraph styles are usually set to Normal, but all the fonts and tabs are set manually. And of course fonts other than Ariel and Times are rarely used in any Word document. Yes, Word certainly has advanced the art of document production. It's virtually turned our computers back into typewriters.
 
Jack Flash said:
Anyone in an engineering curriculum should understand that.
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The interesting thing is that you can say that in any field. Anyone with a communications degree can see that Word is horrible when handling anything other than text, and Power Point needs serious improvement.

dpaanlka said:
Which I think is probably the biggest obstacle for Pages or any other alternative to overcome - consumer perception that Word is somehow a "standard" as we've seen in this very thread.

People may toy around with iWork in the Apple store, or the demos installed on their computer, but without actually giving it a worthy chance, you simply can't appreciate all the great things Pages does so much better than Word. I mean I've used Microsoft Office since version 4... I'm no Word dummy. A plethora of features I'll never use always loses to a refined set of very impressive features I use all the time.

I cry inside when I see Word users manually changing specific style attributes over and over again.
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I got iWork when I started my 3rd year of college and got my first iBook G4. I needed a work processing application and Apple just announced iWork (05 even though it had no year at the end) at MWSF during the break. I got a copy since it was only $80 and Office was asking for $150, too much by a student's standards, and loved it.

I got a hacked version of MS Office and after some time I realized how fat the application was, and how much extra crap they put into the software that I didn't need. I know that the extra stuff was features that a serious Word Pro would have used but iWork took up half the space and I could do more graphically with iWork, so I trashed MS Office and stuck with iWork. Now I finally replaced iWork 05 with 08 and it's even better now that it adds the features that Word had that made using it more productive, like comments and the text formatting bar.

IJ Reilly said:
I cringe when I open Word documents in Pages. All the paragraph styles are usually set to Normal, but all the fonts and tabs are set manually. And of course fonts other than Ariel and Times are rarely used in any Word document. Yes, Word certainly has advanced the art of document production. It's virtually turned our computers back into typewriters.
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When I see people trying to stick photos in Word I want to barf. When I worked for my school's paper some idiot writers sent their images in Word, and we couldn't use them at all. Word compressed them and stripped the metadata from the file. When I opened Word documents with photos in Pages, the format would be all jacked up because Pages read the images with try graphical eyes, and the photo would be tiny inside of this huge box. That was with iWork 05 on my computer. The formating would be destroyed and if they had any kind of ugly text bullets they would go plain. Word Art... YUCK!!! and that would be a terrible transition as well.

I have since told everyone I know to export as PDFs or don't use Word when they want to do anything with graphics.
 
I simply no longer accept Word files. It must be a PDF, or a Pages package. If it's a simple text document, I'll settle with RTF.

Digital Skunk said:
Anyone with a communications degree can see that Word is horrible when handling anything other than text, and Power Point needs serious improvement.
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As a communications major I completely agree.
 
sublicon said:
Man, threads like these are why they invented the term "fanboy" . . I'm sorry, it had to be said.
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You hit the nail on the head, for both users. Both Microsoft Office users and Pages user alike. What can we say, we love our software. I am sure there is something that you appreciate and are willing to standby it no matter how many better options are out there.
 
There's one other explanation before we start throwing around the term fanboi. I've been using Word since the beginning and have bought every new version (except 6, which was universally panned). I have a significant investment of time and effort into learning this program, and so I will only switch to Pages when its reviews show it to be far superior. I don't think this makes me a fanboi but rather a pragmatist.
 
Kashchei said:
There's one other explanation before we start throwing around the term fanboi. I've been using Word since the beginning and have bought every new version (except 6, which was universally panned). I have a significant investment of time and effort into learning this program, and so I will only switch to Pages when its reviews show it to be far superior. I don't think this makes me a fanboi but rather a pragmatist.
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As the many people that support both apps and the others are. When people do use the word Fanboy they usually fail to see that people have justified their choices in their minds, and that choice is usually the best choice for them, whether it be Word or Pages, Windows or Mac, Canon or Nikon. When someone can't convince another person that he or she is wrong and they are right they throw "Fanboy" out there it belittle them just a bit, or to get them angry.

Then there are the times when someone blindly accepts something with no real factual backing then they are just Fanatic Fanboys. :D
 
So Has Anyone Pre-Ordered Office 2008?

I Have & Really Looking Forward To Using It.

Cheers
 
Digital Skunk said:
When someone can't convince another person that he or she is wrong and they are right they throw "Fanboy" out there it belittle them just a bit, or to get them angry.
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Exactly. Using this derogatory term in a discussion is a substitute for a real argument. It certainly is in this case. The purpose is to discourage people from discussing why they like or prefer a given product. Sad, but true.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Exactly. Using this derogatory term in a discussion is a substitute for a real argument. It certainly is in this case. The purpose is to discourage people from discussing why they like or prefer a given product. Sad, but true.
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It more or less follows this path every single time:

Person 1: I am asking a question about some particular topic.

Person 2: I recommend you take such and such advice.

Person 3: Person 2, you don't know what you're talking about.

Person 2: Well actually, I do, and here is detailed reason x, y, and z.

Person 3: Everyone, don't listen to Person 2, he is a fanboy! Ahhh! (Sets fire to self and leaps from window)
 
dpaanlka said:
It more or less follows this path every single time:

Person 1: I am asking a question about some particular topic.

Person 2: I recommend you take such and such advice.

Person 3: Person 2, you don't know what you're talking about.

Person 2: Well actually, I do, and here is detailed reason x, y, and z.

Person 3: Everyone, don't listen to Person 2, he is a fanboy! Ahhh! (Sets fire to self and leaps from window)
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Sup, Person 3? :cool:
 
I would go with Office but iWork is a much improved program from past.

I am a big Mac guy that has both and I use Office much more than iWork due to just experience and ease with it

I am currently giving iWork a 3rd try with a project I am working on and to be honest it really is a pain though I am slowly warming to it. I find a lot of the iWork features are good but far from any easier than the Office ones.
 
I am so pleased to be rid of Microsoft Office. Thank you Apple for iWork 2008. It's compatible enough for me.
 
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