iWork or Office

aditghai · Feb 29, 2008

Ok. Recent switcher here.

I used Windows for 14 years. I dumped it mainly because it looked to plain and dull, not because of the virus problems or anything.

Just wondering, how many of you have dumped office altogether for iWork.

~Shard~ · Feb 29, 2008

I have found iWork to be very useful in certain cases, but am still an Office 2004 user. I find Pages not to be good in terms of a basic word processor but better in terms of graphical publishing and such with respect to documents.

Numbers is nicer than Excel in my opinion as long as you do not need power functions. Otherwise, nothing beats Excel, as I find it to be the strongest of the Office apps hands down. I am admittedly a "power user" when it comes to spreadsheets, hence why I use Excel exclusively. That being said, I have not taken the time to look into the guts of Numbers to see if some of the functionality I would require is present or not - from what I have seen though it is not...

Keynote I would take over PowerPoint any day. Easier to use, slicker looking presentations, it's great.

Other options to consider are always NeoOffice and OpenOffice. Never used them myself though, only heard from others who use and recommend them.

Edit: Might want to expand the poll choices, many options are not listed (e.g. using both, using Excel not Pages, using an open source solution, using Keynote vs. PowerPoint, etc.)

aditghai · Feb 29, 2008

Yup
Still trying to figure out which is better. I like Excel but the way it looks in OS X is crappy comapred to Windows. Word is Ok.

Never gave pages and number a real chance.

cohibadad · Feb 29, 2008

I've used Office for Windows a lot. On Mac I use iWork. I think it depends on what you use the apps for which you will like better.

Freyqq · Feb 29, 2008

if you want full compatability..get office 08..iwork has maybe 80% compatability..it can open the files but they often look weird

its also a much better office suite

Vanilla · Feb 29, 2008

If you work in a mixed environment you need both.
I mainly create stuff in iWork but then regularly have to export into Office compatible formats and then use Office to tidy up the export.
Vanilla

aditghai · Mar 1, 2008

I dont understand why Microsoft didnt speed up the starting time in Office 2008. When I fire up Word on a Power PC at school, it opens up in a second. Office 2008 was built for the intel platform so why isnt it faster too load?

Bill-You evil Bastard

Hankster · Mar 1, 2008

I used to only use iWork for about a week, then realized that I could never email or move files to other computers. 99% of the computers around me are PC. So, now I just use Office because it is so much easier to email and move files around. I hated when I couldn't open a iWork file in Office.

Basically, use the program that will make your life easier. If your files are going to be opened by others who use Office, I'd use Office...else you could just stick with iWorks. For the record I like iWorks better, it seems simple and smooth.

aditghai said:
I dont understand why Microsoft didnt speed up the starting time in Office 2008. When I fire up Word on a Power PC at school, it opens up in a second. Office 2008 was built for the intel platform so why isnt it faster too load?

Bill-You evil Bastard

I've been a PC user since the early 90s and one thing I hate about MS is all their new or upgrades run slower. I don't understand their thinking but it's very annoying. Window 98 was faster than 2000 which was faster than XP which was faster than Vista. This goes for Office also. Each time they upgrade a program it overbloated and slower.

canucks-17 · Mar 1, 2008

I have both on my computer and when it was iWork 06' and Office: 2004, it was only Office. But since iWork 08' there was no new office so I just used that. Now that Office: 2008 has arrived, I have it but never use it.

wordmunger · Mar 1, 2008

Sometimes I wish iWork (especially Numbers) offered a little more flexibility, but I haven't used Office on my main computer since I upgraded to Leopard. I still have it installed on my notebook, but I definitely prefer iWork. I haven't had any trouble sharing files in either direction (iWork to Office or Office to iWork).

Gaelic1 · Mar 1, 2008

I like iWork. I use pages for letters and light word processing such as brochures, invitations etc. I do write short stories and like to use illustrations, which Pages does very well. I have Office 2000 but I don't need all that power and the learning curve.
Numbers looks great and does all that I need in a spreadsheet. I am retired and don't need all the bells and whistles of Excel. I like the way iWork integrates with my other Apple programs so it's a no-brainer for me.

robanga · Mar 1, 2008

I am a relatively new user to iWork and I like it a lot. We use it for home use and our home based businesses. I do maintain Office (waiting for my 2008 upgrade to get here sometime in March) on the Macs as well.

Primarily Office is there for total compatibility with my office notebook (a Dell) and for those few features that I need that are Office only.

iWork gets about 70% of the use at home.

Daveoc64 · Mar 1, 2008

Everyone I know that uses iWork does so for the "Don't want MS stuff on my Mac" thing.

Which I think is pretty petty.

I use Office 2008 because it suits my needs better.

~Shard~ · Mar 1, 2008

Daveoc64 said:
Everyone I know that uses iWork does so for the "Don't want MS stuff on my Mac" thing.

Which I think is pretty petty.

I use Office 2008 because it suits my needs better.

Agreed - someone should refuse to use Office "just because it's Microsoft" - they should instead have legitimate reasons for not using it. It is indeed petty and childish in my opinion. If a tool is good, suits your needs, etc. then who cares who makes it?

72930 · Mar 1, 2008

~Shard~ said:
Agreed - someone should refuse to use Office "just because it's Microsoft" - they should instead have legitimate reasons for not using it. It is indeed petty and childish in my opinion. If a tool is good, suits your needs, etc. then who cares who makes it?

I have both and prefer iWork. PPT is useful to have as I do need to make presentations from my school PCs unfortunately.

My reasons include speed of startup, the minimal screen space taken up by Pages. Instant alpha. The simplicity of Numbers for the simple tasks I want. Things look better with less effort. Updates from within OSX's Software Update.app. More compatibility with Quick Look.

~Shard~ · Mar 1, 2008

psychofreak said:
I have both and prefer iWork. PPT is useful to have as I do need to make presentations from my school PCs unfortunately.

My reasons include speed of startup, the minimal screen space taken up by Pages. Instant alpha. The simplicity of Numbers for the simple tasks I want. Things look better with less effort. Updates from within OSX's Software Update.app. More compatibility with Quick Look.

All excellent reasons, and much better than "cuz it's Microsoft".

As I stated previously, PowerPoint doesn't hold a candle to Keynote in my opinion, and if I didn't need some hardcore spreadsheet functionality I would probably use Numbers as well. I just need a word processor that works, no graphics etc. and Word is my preference in this case. Pages is a great app from the looks of it, just not what I am personally interested in or require.

EricNau · Mar 1, 2008

~Shard~ said:
I have found iWork to be very useful in certain cases, but am still an Office 2004 user. I find Pages not to be good in terms of a basic word processor but better in terms of graphical publishing and such with respect to documents.

Numbers is nicer than Excel in my opinion as long as you do not need power functions. Otherwise, nothing beats Excel, as I find it to be the strongest of the Office apps hands down. I am admittedly a "power user" when it comes to spreadsheets, hence why I use Excel exclusively. That being said, I have not taken the time to look into the guts of Numbers to see if some of the functionality I would require is present or not - from what I have seen though it is not...

Keynote I would take over PowerPoint any day. Easier to use, slicker looking presentations, it's great.

Other options to consider are always NeoOffice and OpenOffice. Never used them myself though, only heard from others who use and recommend them.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said.

Pages is great for publishing more complex documents with with images and graphics. With pages, it truly is as simple as drag and drop. I've tried using it for simpler documents, however, and I wasn't impressed; therefore, I still use Word for simple word processing.

Numbers drives me crazy. Although it looks nicer and more elegant than excel, I just can't ever seem to make it get the job done.

Now, the real reason I bought iWork - Keynote. Keynote is vastly superior to Powerpoint in my opinion. You just can't beat Keynote's presentations. Plus, if you bring your own laptop for presentations, you need not worry about compatibility.

For what it's worth, I tried both OpenOffice and NeoOffice and was not impressed with either.

~Shard~ · Mar 1, 2008

EricNau said:
<snip>

Thanks Eric, glad to see I'm not completely out to lunch with my views and impressions! Although it has happened before on many prior occasions I've found...

I've never tried NeoOffice or OpenOffice but have no real desire to at this point in time...

eRondeau · Mar 1, 2008

I generally use Office to read other people's files, but iWork to make my own. I am currently developing a fairly complicated training package for my workplace and I tried doing what I wanted to do on PowerPoint. No go, way too many limitations and it looked awful. Made it at home using Keynote in just a few hours -- looks amazing! iWork FTW! :apple:

~Shard~ · Mar 1, 2008

eRondeau said:
I generally use Office to read other people's files, but iWork to make my own. I am currently developing a fairly complicated training package for my workplace and I tried doing what I wanted to do on PowerPoint. No go, way too many limitations and it looked awful. Made it at home using Keynote in just a few hours -- looks amazing! iWork FTW!

Yep, Keynote is definitely the way to go. And as Eric stated above, as long as you have your own laptop for presentations you need not worry about compatibility issues.

kuwisdelu · Mar 1, 2008

Daveoc64 said:
Everyone I know that uses iWork does so for the "Don't want MS stuff on my Mac" thing.

Not the case here. I use iWork because I think it's a better program, though with a little less functionality now. I don't really need the extra functionality that MS Office has. I don't work in an office, so there's no problem with compatibility, though if I did, I'd probably just go with iWork + NeoOffice if I could. Pages is much better than Word and easier to use IMO, and most agree Keynote is superior to PowerPoint. And when I need to work with data, I use SAS and R, not Excel or Numbers.

EricNau · Mar 1, 2008

~Shard~ said:
Thanks Eric, glad to see I'm not completely out to lunch with my views and impressions! Although it has happened before on many prior occasions I've found...

I was just glad to see someone who agreed with me.

~Shard~ said:
I've never tried NeoOffice or OpenOffice but have no real desire to at this point in time...

Truthfully, don't bother. I suppose they're OK for someone who doesn't want to buy MS Office for one reason or another, or for the occasional person who only needs Word to open a document and copy/paste all the text into Pages, but in no way would I consider it a suitable replacement for someone who uses Office as much as you or I do.

kuwisdelu · Mar 1, 2008

NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org aren't really suitable for people who need all the advanced features of MS Office or who need full office compatibility.

But they're much more useful than for the person "who only needs Word to open a document and copy/paste all the text into Pages." They're certainly more than enough to get the average student through any class. Honestly, I think NeoOffice offers far more than the average user would ever need to use. As a college student, I used it for a long time, and the only reason I ended up getting iWork (which was actually more expensive than MS Office would have been with my student discount) wasn't due to any lack of functionality from NeoOffice, but simply because of the ease of use and because I liked the way it works. NeoOffice works much like MS Office does, but just falls behind in some functionality, which I didn't need, so there's no reason I would ever have bought MS Office to replace it, unless you really need those advanced features, or need 100% compatibility (where NeoOffice gives you 99.9% and iWork probably like 75-80%)

~Shard~ · Mar 1, 2008

EricNau said:
I was just glad to see someone who agreed with me.

Well, you know what the say, great minds think alike! I think there's a second part to that saying as well but I always seem to conveniently forget it, hmmm...

EricNau said:
Truthfully, don't bother. I suppose they're OK for someone who doesn't want to buy MS Office for one reason or another, or for the occasional person who only needs Word to open a document and copy/paste all the text into Pages, but in no way would I consider it a suitable replacement for someone who uses Office as much as you or I do.

Sounds good, recommendation noted. Thanks for the info.

IJ Reilly · Mar 1, 2008

iWork or Office

Do you use Office or iWork

I use Office only. iWork is crap

I use iWork only. I dont want anything MS on my Mac

I use Word for typing but Numbers for Spreadsheets

I use Pages for typing but excel for spreadsheets.

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