Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iWork vs. Mac Office

IJ Reilly said:
If you're a fast typer, you possibly can overrun Pages' ability to keep up. I'm not the world's fastest typist, but even I have noticed this. It depends a great deal on the size of the document -- if it's heavy in illustrations and tables, Pages can get pretty slow. When this happens, saving the document or even quitting and restarting Pages seems to help.
Click to expand...
Thank you for posting your comment. It seeme this typing "lag" with Pages is normal then. I am pretty fast typer as I write countless e-mails, quotes and proposals between the phone calls (and while on the phone).
I like the simple design (sometimes, less is more in designing good layouts for the proposal/quotes/reports). So, I don't really use too much graphics. However, for this particular quote, I had to attached 3 Excel sheets (I "printed" those excel sheet in PDF; so one excel sheet in one-sheet PDF file). So, the total page # was 5 (ie. the cover, the main copy, and 3 pages of those PDF files).
If Pages are not able to handle this relatively light work, I am concerned how sluggish it could be if I do more complicated proposal.
I use CS2 for marketing materials; but, I prefer not use it for the daily quotes as it would be an over-kill.
Does new MacBook handle Pages better than this iBook with 1.5 GB Ram?
 
I prefer Word. I haven't get a true feeling for Pages yet. Maybe in a few years, but right now it's Word all the way. Plus I dont see iWork being worth $79 bucks.
 
jaxstate said:
I prefer Word. I haven't get a true feeling for Pages yet. Maybe in a few years, but right now it's Word all the way.
Click to expand...
I also use Word as well. But, sometime, Word is not suitable for page layout jobs in easy manners. I use Word for the run-of-the-mill quotes at my job. But, for something a little more flashy, I like one of those page layout software such as Pages and InDesign. But, InDesign for the daily quote/regular proposal is over-kill in my opinion. So, I use InDesign for more serious works such as marketing materials (which can be used repeately for many occasions).
 
i would second the idea to try NeoOffice. It is currently free and looks to be on ly $10 when completed. You can save as opendocument and word 95/97/2000/xp (no 2003 yet) as well as many others. i have used it for a while now and really like it. the one test that i want to run it to import a fairly complex word document and make sure it is formatted correctly.

For the few times you need an excel like spreadsheet option, google's spreadsheet is a nice free option.
 
pages for a thesis?

I am waiting for WWDC before I buy my first ever mac, a 2.0 macbook white. I am starting grad school in september and am facing the question of iwork or office as well. Does anyone have any experience with large(ish) documents. I will be working on a 150 page thesis. I am leaning toward iWork, partly because of this thread, and because I have heard word is bad with large docs. Any experiences?
 
maccurdy said:
I am waiting for WWDC before I buy my first ever mac, a 2.0 macbook white. I am starting grad school in september and am facing the question of iwork or office as well. Does anyone have any experience with large(ish) documents. I will be working on a 150 page thesis. I am leaning toward iWork, partly because of this thread, and because I have heard word is bad with large docs. Any experiences?
Click to expand...

I would say go with neither option, and use LaTeX. I wrote a comparable-length dissertation using LaTeX, and wouldn't have gone any other way. IMO neither Word or Pages is a suitable choice for this length document, particularly if it has many illustrations or figures.

Taking the time to learn LaTeX, coupled with a free editor, will be well worth it to you.

I would still buy iWork, if only for Keynote for your presentations. This will then give you the chance to learn Pages, and see how it can be useful for other applications, just not 150-pages dissertations :).
 
I haven't tried iWork, but I went with Office. There is a student/teacher version availible for cheap.

Office for Mac is fantastic. Yes, it's made by Microsoft, but it gets the work done, and it gets it done well. Excel, Powerpoint, and Word are all used in class, and it's nice have one suite get the job done. Admittedly, I usually use textedit for anything under 4 or 5 pages because I like my interfaces as simple as possible, but I really can't get a lot of important projects done without Office. Plus, by using Office, it's pretty much a guarantee that import/exporting is going to work perfectly. I don't know about your professors, but mine like to post up everything in Word. At my campus, the Office 2004 suite costs about $50 to boot, making it an easy choice compared to iWork.

I don't know why it seems as if some of the previous posters were dissatisfied with Office. It is a very good program, does what's needed, and it's not like you get BSoD. I really can't tell a difference between using Office for Mac and Office for Windows, as both of them are very good.
 
im in college too, can iWork open office word and powerpoint files? this is a must as most profs at my school will distribute word and powerpoint files to the whole class...
 
erkanasu said:
im in college too, can iWork open office word and powerpoint files? this is a must as most profs at my school will distribute word and powerpoint files to the whole class...
Click to expand...

It certainly can. Almost everything is imported fine, with the exception of some more unusual formatting instances.
 
I think people have decided that pages is the way to go here, but I always found it lacking. When I write essays for University I want an efficient tool and pages is sparse, overcomplicated file formats and font issues. Plus when looking at it on your screen I find the window needs adjusting most of the time. I try whenever possible to stay away from MS but word is simply refined and efficient and in the long run a lot faster than pages. However powerpoint is the worst put together presentation tool and crashes in my experience, keynote is brilliant but a little irrelevant as well. keynote uses technology that runs through mac. You could put a keynote presentation together with imovie with little deficite. My choice is anything that has word which means office. In the life of your mac you will likely use excel as well. Iwork seems to be a work in progress to me.

advocate of MS only in this instance
 
face it, word is still the most widely used standard in almost every industry, unless u work for yourself, you have to use word.
 
clevin said:
face it, word is still the most widely used standard in almost every industry, unless u work for yourself, you have to use word.
Click to expand...

Pages exports files to Word just fine, so I'd have to disagree with you. In fact, the ability of Pages to handle graphics and templates makes it much better than Word, in my opinion. I set up a template for my research group here at CNRS, for them to enter automated experimental data results into, and everyone uses Word. To make the template, however, I used Pages, just because setting up all of the formatting and embedding graphics was so much easier.
 
gauchogolfer said:
I would say go with neither option, and use LaTeX. I wrote a comparable-length dissertation using LaTeX, and wouldn't have gone any other way. IMO neither Word or Pages is a suitable choice for this length document, particularly if it has many illustrations or figures.

Taking the time to learn LaTeX, coupled with a free editor, will be well worth it to you.

I would still buy iWork, if only for Keynote for your presentations. This will then give you the chance to learn Pages, and see how it can be useful for other applications, just not 150-pages dissertations :).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I have just been checking it out, and I like the premise of the program a lot, that is, let writers worry about writing and not appearances. I am relatively computer stupid though, and am wondering about its user-friendlyness. I am doing an M. Phil in Humanities, thus graphs and charts and stuff are not overly important to me. I hate worperfect, switched to word 2 years ago, which I prefer, but usually at least two or three times per project it makes me want to throw my computer out the window, and it is usually about bull**** appearance related stuff.
 
maccurdy said:
Thanks for the reply. I have just been checking it out, and I like the premise of the program a lot, that is, let writers worry about writing and not appearances. I am relatively computer stupid though, and am wondering about its user-friendlyness. I am doing an M. Phil in Humanities, thus graphs and charts and stuff are not overly important to me. I hate worperfect, switched to word 2 years ago, which I prefer, but usually at least two or three times per project it makes me want to throw my computer out the window, and it is usually about bull**** appearance related stuff.
Click to expand...

I'm a big proponent of LaTeX for just this reason, that it lets you focus on writing on not layout of the page and all the formatting stuff. I'd think that might be just as important as its ability to handle figures easily. In terms of ease-of-use, it's really not that tough, especially if you use one of the many editors available that make things much more graphical (not like how I learned, using NeXTstep :eek: ). Check out TeXShop as one example. There are many users of LaTeX in academia, and many forums if you have trouble. Most academic journals also have pre-made templates for their publications, which makes paper submission painless.

Two thumbs up. But, still buy iWork for your day-to-day uses.
 
iWork supports a lot more file formats than Office, and it also natively exports PDF files. Granted, OSX can do this already, but it's worth a mention.

My biggest problem with Office 2004 is the stupid "optimizing font menu" slow loading problem that stares me in the face every time I first load one of Office's programs. I also think that Office is a much slower, resource hog of the two...maybe it's just my experience, but iWork always seems snappier/quicker than Office to me.

Either way you can't go wrong, but since iWork opens Office files (but not vice versa), you may want to go with iWork because it gives you more options. You can also go the free route and download Open Office, which will also support Office documents.
 
snakeanthony said:
I'm unsure whether to purchase the Office suite or iWork.
Click to expand...
One important consideration, is whether or not you need to interface with others using Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

If you think there may be a need to do this then I would go with Office for the compatibility.
 
Also, Im not sure if iworks has anything that is equivalent of excel, which is a really important part in scientific calculation and plotting.
 
clevin said:
Also, Im not sure if iworks has anything that is equivalent of excel, which is a really important part in scientific calculation and plotting.
Click to expand...

iWorks 06 doesn't have an excel equivalent, although I'm keeping my fingers crossed for iWork 07 to include it. For maccurdy, though, it doesn't really matter, since they are pursuing a M.Phil in Humanities, and so is not likely to need too much in the way of spreadsheets.
 
I much prefer Word 2004, though if the current preview of the heavily redesigned Word 2007 for Windows is any indication of what we will be seeing when they release the Universal version of Office for the Mac, I am anticipating that I will then switch over to Pages, a product that I expect to then be radically improved. I also have a lot of hope that iWork 2007 will be a great product. iWork 2006 has a lot of issues for me in terms of usability, but then again, it is a young product.
 
I don't know that I expect Pages to be radically overhauled for 2007, but probably more in the way of more incremental improvement, as in 2006. The addition of a spreadsheet to iWork would be welcomed but I'm not hanging on the edge of my seat.

The thing that probably irritates me the most about the entire MS Office phenomenon is how poorly these tools are used by the people who assume that they have no alternative. I have seen a hundred too many grotesque PowerPoint presentations, badly formatted Word documents and simple tables made up in Excel. The last one is a special pet peeve of mine, and tells me volumes about how poorly Word is suited for basic writing tasks, like making tables. If creating tables in Word was even remotely comprehensible for most people, then they wouldn't be dragging out Excel every time they need to put things in neat rows and columns. And yet, so many people assume that they must use Office, that nothing else will do. Amazing!
 
gauchogolfer said:
I would say go with neither option, and use LaTeX. I wrote a comparable-length dissertation using LaTeX, and wouldn't have gone any other way. IMO neither Word or Pages is a suitable choice for this length document, particularly if it has many illustrations or figures.
Click to expand...

I finished my dissertation in April using Word and it got pretty slow. I had many (30+ tables) and figures (10+ png files). However I was stuck with word because I needed Endnote (drastically sped up the citation/references hunt and formating).
 
discoforce said:
I finished my dissertation in April using Word and it got pretty slow. I had many (30+ tables) and figures (10+ png files). However I was stuck with word because I needed Endnote (drastically sped up the citation/references hunt and formating).
Click to expand...

I also used Endnote, since one of its capabilities is to export BibTeX files for citations. It works seamlessly with LaTeX.
 
Hi I managed to search for this thread (knowing that making another thread is wrong) and so I have a question with iWork vs. Mac Office. I've been using MS Office (Windows) for a long time now (like at least 6 years) and I intend to use MS Office for Mac (for whatever that comes to play in university) once I switch to a MacBook.

Question: Is there any extra benefit to getting iWork in addition to the MS Office for Mac I'm getting? $50 for iWork is really cheap and I have no problems adding it as a preinstall.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back