iwork vs. neo office

[ToneMonkey]

Hi all-

This is my first post here. Apologies if this is a "clueless newbie question" that has already been asked and answered.

I'm definitely making the move from WinTel to a 24" iMac as soon as leopard becomes available.

I'd be interested in any personal experience and insights you folks might have of iwork 08 vs. the current version of neo office.

I write manuals for a living, so I'm comfortable learning new apps, but the wife... not so much. I really hate the idea of buying MS Office for the Mac, just because I have truly grown to hate anything MS or Windows, but I digress.

So should I have iwork preloaded on my new system?

I use spreadsheets quite a lot but I don't use advanced features and functions much. Just plain vanilla arithmetic operations and sorting.

I produce the occasional letter in Word, but I'd be cool using anything remotely compatible. Again, the wife might be more of an issue there.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[stockcerts]

I can't give you a fare comparison between Works and Neo Office, but I have begun using Neo Office in the past two weeks. It has a polished interface and to me feels like commercial software. I've heard some say that the spreadsheet program isn't up to speed for full featured business use, but may suffice for home users. I've used the word processing portion of the package and I like it. I'm sure others will chime in with their assesments.

 

[Much Ado]

I use spreadsheets quite a lot but I don't use advanced features and functions much. Just plain vanilla arithmetic operations and sorting.

I produce the occasional letter in Word, but I'd be cool using anything remotely compatible.

This is crucial, i guess. If you don't need the advanced features that you might find in, say, MS Office, then iWork is a fantastic package. It will look light-years better than NeoOffice from a GUI point of view, and what it does it does superbly.

Honestly, if you've got the money, i'd go for it. You can always load up NeoOffice for free as well if you want to, which in itself is a perfectly acceptable package.

If you're still unsure, then don't order iWork pre-loaded, and use NeoOffice and the iWork trial for yourself first before deciding.

Disclaimer: I use both, and NeoOffice is really nice too. I'm just a sucker for shiny applications.

 

[~Shard~]

Pre-loading iWork won't really buy you much or save you any money. I would say just buy your Mac and give the iWork free trial a go. If it meets your needs, great, pick it up and install it. If it doesn't, give Neo Office a try. Regardless, since Neo Office is free, you can test it out at any time.

As for the suites themselves, Neo Office is quite good, but it is free, so you can't expect too much from it. iWork is great for the average user, which it sounds like might be you and your wife - if you do not require advanced spreadsheet functionality, then Numbers is probably fine for you, and the integration between Pages, Numbers and Keynote is excellent. They are all slick apps and I have always found Pages to be more "creative-friendly" than Word when it comes to doing anything with tables, graphics, forms, etc. - i.e. anything more visual than black text on white paper.

 

[nadinbrzezinski]

Hi all-

This is my first post here. Apologies if this is a "clueless newbie question" that has already been asked and answered.

I'm definitely making the move from WinTel to a 24" iMac as soon as leopard becomes available.

I'd be interested in any personal experience and insights you folks might have of iwork 08 vs. the current version of neo office.

I write manuals for a living, so I'm comfortable learning new apps, but the wife... not so much. I really hate the idea of buying MS Office for the Mac, just because I have truly grown to hate anything MS or Windows, but I digress.

So should I have iwork preloaded on my new system?

I use spreadsheets quite a lot but I don't use advanced features and functions much. Just plain vanilla arithmetic operations and sorting.

I produce the occasional letter in Word, but I'd be cool using anything remotely compatible. Again, the wife might be more of an issue there.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Ok... welcome to the club

I write books for a living and until Word 07 came oiut I used open office... why? it handled tables better, it handled images better, it did things much better from the POV of the power user. Now the folks at Microsoft released a very solid package. Why am I mentioning open office? That is what neooffice essentially is... with a better GUI.

I tried i-works at the store, and from trying it, it didn't seem to do all that neo will be able to do, and not as capably.

The best you can do is download it, neo that is, and try it. If you are comming from the word environment, that will be more familiar to your wife in the begining

If all you do is write the occasional letter and so does she, it will not matter really.

As is you will soon find, and so will she, that the mac environment is very intuitive

Now is a critical point, when dealing with clients, remember to save your document in word format. It is still the standard

Oh and great disclaimer, we still own a win box, hubby is a gamer. Guess what? I will continue to use word for final layout, It is that powerful of a program

 

[IJ Reilly]

No need to demo iWork at a store. A fully-functional 30-day preview of the current version comes preloaded on every new Mac. The interface is very different from Office or NeoOffice (which is after all an MS Office clone). Give it some time. Learn the interface, explore the Inspector. Most of those who come away from using Pages complaining that it's not as "powerful" as Word simply have not made a substantial effort to adjust to the different approach, or to find out what it can actually do.

 

[nadinbrzezinski]

Ok... welcome to the club

I write books for a living and until Word 07 came oiut I used open office... why? it handled tables better, it handled images better, it did things much better from the POV of the power user. Now the folks at Microsoft released a very solid package. Why am I mentioning open office? That is what neooffice essentially is... with a better GUI.

I tried i-works at the store, and from trying it, it didn't seem to do all that neo will be able to do, and not as capably.

The best you can do is download it, neo that is, and try it. If you are comming from the word environment, that will be more familiar to your wife in the begining

If all you do is write the occasional letter and so does she, it will not matter really.

As is you will soon find, and so will she, that the mac environment is very intuitive

Now is a critical point, when dealing with clients, remember to save your document in word format. It is still the standard

Oh and great disclaimer, we still own a win box, hubby is a gamer. Guess what? I will continue to use word for final layout, It is that powerful of a program

True you can try I-works for free, dopey me.

And I just downloaded neo... and unless I am missing something tracking changes is nowhere to be found nor is insert comments

Which reminds me, one very weak area of any office suite is the insert comments. Unlike word (and I-works) it does not place them on the side. One of our fellow writers at the writing group uses open office (for intel) and I have used it for years, and we basically sugested to her to use footnotes, which I also didn't see. I will have to play with neo a little more, but it looks like I will end up using i-works on this machine... (and bean for really light writing when I want to just get up and go)

By the way, I have used many apps over the years, and find out that the best test of how intuitive and app is, well can I seat down and do most of the basic stuff in ten minutes?

Power thingies should take a week to figure out