iWorks vs Office - Actual differences

[Skydiver32]

I can't believe you didn't gather this information as common sense, during undergrad. Anyone who has been on earth in the last 10 years, especially in the academic setting, knows office is the standard. How did you write your papers during undergrad? This guy is ridiculous...

Why do you have a Mac?

Anyone who has been on earth knows that PC has been the standard? How many Mac do you see in the business world? How many macs are instituions using (other than an occasional lab)? Sure there has been an increase in acceptance of Macs, but the great majority of the world (Including Mac users via Boot camp, parallels, VM) use windows.

My point is, I'm leaving the standard world to the magic world of Apple, as all of you have. Hence, a need for the question for Actual differences, instead of perceived differences because I still need the functionality

Sorry for the slight detour.
Good info here. Thanks

 

[Fafafoooey]

I use MS Office. It gets the job done, and this way I never have to worry that it won't be compatible. The fact that it was free for me was a nice plus.

Free huh?

 

[fblack]

When I was in Grad school my free time was very limited. As you are going to med school you may want to cut down on any extra systems you may need to learn or any extra hassles with compatibility.

If you already are familiar with MS Office then my suggestion would be to stick with it. Get the Mac version or get the PC version for bootcamp/parallels. I'm not a fan of MS but compatibility or access issues are a pain when everyone on your team is running a different program and you have deadlines.

-good luck

 

[beg_ne]

You could always get iWork with your MacBook since you can get the discount that way.

If you'll be doing any kind of presentations Keynote is more than worth the extremely good price you'll pay for iWork.

If you have any problems in the future opening/sending docs you can always download a trial of Mac Office and see if that works or try the free alternatives.

I've heard even Mac office doesn't have perfect conversion from MS Office, and its made by the same company!

Office suites seem to be a real clusterf*** and any problems you might possibly run into will vary greatly depending on your individual circumstances.

Personally I use iWork as I am not beholden to anyone and the software looks, runs and produces top notch results for me.

 

[spice weasel]

However, Keynote smokes PowerPoint, imho. When I use Keynote to present after someone uses ppt, people are sucked into my presentation. Keynote is more solid, reliable, is easier to figure out, and has amazing effects. To be honest, it was the killer app that made me get a Mac. No regrets. I have a lot of pastor/evangelist friends that made the switch for these reasons. Now university people are asking me what program I'm using to present.

You said it. Even though I hate them, giving slide presentations is pretty much expected in my field, and I give a lot of them. For me, Keynote is worth the cost of iWork alone.

I use both Office and iWork, and I much prefer iWork. The one thing that bugs the hell out of me in Word is when it tries to "help" you by doing things you don't ask it to. Back when I did a lot of lecturing I used to make all my outlines in Pages. Ever try making a good outline in Word? It is an exercise in frustration and cursing. In Pages it works perfectly.

All that said, the vast majority of people use Office, so you will have to take that into account. If you are only using your productivity suite for your own needs, I think iWork is a much better deal. If you need a high level of interoperability with Office users (things like track changes, just as one example), you will want Office. I can't speak to Open Office, but that might be a viable alternative in that case.

There's a reason I use both: iWork whenever I can, Office whenever I have to.

 

[rdstoll]

Q? What are the actual differences? Other than how one looks over the other. Is there anything you can't do with iWork and need office?

I've tried both iWork and the new Office and have to say that if you are at all concerned about how some of your existing Office files are going to look in iWork then you are better off just going with Office for Mac. I tried opening some Excel files in iWork and they are just not the same. However, when I open the same files with Office for Mac they look the exact same as when I use these files on my PC. Just my two cents.

 

[masmullin]

iWorks

OpenOffice is not fully compatable with Office - Based on personal experience... tables created in OpenOffice dont look right in Office and things need to be "retouched"

iWorks - my experiences shows that iWorks is fully compatable with Office... what I make in iWorks looks exactly the same as office

Office - is obviously fully compatable with Office

Why is Office compatability important? Most corporations/teachers/etc have Office installed, and you want thigns to look proper on their machines.

I recommend iWorks. It is simpler to use than Office and is 100% compatable. Personally I have a very difficult time getting documents to "look how I want them to look" in Office, while in iWorks everything just looks amazing and is easy to make it do so.

 

[Richard1028]

Haha!! Try something ~ 300K, and all for the privalege of getting a job where I'll get to work 80 hrs per week and get about $5 per hour week:

Add 20 hours a week for the new National Health care programs. And deduct 20% from your income as well.

And for the "academic standard" is office, isn't Windows the computing std?

Only applies to the, "unenlightened".

Sorry to be a PITA, but tha is what I'm supposed to be doing - Questioning everything

Already the makings of a good M.D.!

 

[DR_K13]

I use both, however you can try Neo office http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php which is basically open office ported for OSX.

 

[rhett7660]

As others have suggested. Download a version of each and try it out for free.

You could also do a search on this forum and find a quite a few different threads regarding this topic and many others that deal with Office programs.

As far as Powerpoint being substandard to Keynote, I think that has to deal with more of the presenter. You can make a crappy keynote presentation just as fast as you can in Powerpoint.

Good luck with your search.

 

[chameleon81]

Office 2007 on MS . It is industry standard and fast. Only piece of software from iWOrk that can compete Office is Keynote where it still takes more time to do presentations. ( DOes not have smart draws which are essential if you want to explain things with graphs etc )

Even if you go to Apple Careers section they are looking for people who are capable of operating MS Office products.

 

[alphaod]

They both suck compared to pen and paper

Now that said, I have Office for Word and Excel, and iWork for Keynote.

PowerPoint is just terrible in comparison. Pages and Solver are amateurs compared to Word and Excel.

 

[dsnort]

I use Office, NeoOffice, and iWork.

Prefer iWork for personal use, but can have compatibility issues when exporting docs to Office, (for example, cells hidden in Numbers can disappear, along with the data in them, when exported to Excel). Mostly export to PDF from iWork.

NeoOffice is better compatibility wise, but a little "Windows '95ish", if you know what I mean.

If it's something that just has to work in Office, I use ...Office, 2003 version.

Note, I like the look of Keynote, but unfortunately every presentation I've ever done had to submitted to be opened and used on a common computer connected to the projector, always a Windows machine. (Apparently, getting a Windows computer to work reliably work with a projector can be complicated, so people opt to only let one computer do it. Invariably, it screws up too).