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iWorks vs Office for Mac?

P

polythene pam

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 23, 2005
84
0
Florida
I am SO excited about the upcoming update!!! Whoo hoooooo!!!

Anyhow, since I'll be using my iBook for school, I was hoping for some feedback on which software I should purchase: iWork or Office? iwork would cost half of what office costs, but I don't know if a word document on iWork would be compatible with a PC (in case I have to email a paper to a professor or something like that).

Does anyone have any experience using either? I am leaning toward Office because it appears to be more hassle-free. But I could be wrong.

Help!!!

And congratulations to all of us survivors of the Update Drought of 2005!!!
 
polythene pam said:
Anyhow, since I'll be using my iBook for school, I was hoping for some feedback on which software I should purchase: iWork or Office? iwork would cost half of what office costs, but I don't know if a word document on iWork would be compatible with a PC (in case I have to email a paper to a professor or something like that).
Click to expand...

I like Pages, and the export to PDF means that you can email your work (what ever happened to hand-written essays?!) to the professor and it will be very compatible. It is also much less stress than using Word, and you can get good looking results in about half the time, although it does have limitations (Scale an image to a percentage of its pixel size? Sorry, can't do!) and it is a version 1 product as well.

However iWork doesn't have a database or spreadsheet package. Word is also the de-facto standard. However I just find all those buttons on the toolbar confusing, although you can spend some time rearranging them.
 
For a student, Office all the way. Don't waste your time worrying about .xls/.doc/.ppt compatibility, and use a package that is well established.

How about downloading the 30 day Office trial, and getting hold of the iWork trial CD, and comparing for yourself?

Once again though, I strongly believe you should choose Office and ignore any anti-Microsoft views you or others may have.

AppleMatt
 
AppleMatt said:
For a student, Office all the way. Don't waste your time worrying about .xls/.doc/.ppt compatibility, and use a package that is well established.

How about downloading the 30 day Office trial, and getting hold of the iWork trial CD, and comparing for yourself?

Once again though, I strongly believe you should choose Office and ignore any anti-Microsoft views you or others may have.

AppleMatt
Click to expand...

I fully agree. Regardless of your view on M$, specifically whether you believe that .doc/.ppt/.xls should be standards or not, the point is they are so just do yourself a favor and get Office Mac, it will save you a lot of possible headache and make things that much easier for sharing and receiving school/work related data.
 
From what you guys are saying Office is the way to go. Cool. I just wish I could buy it for cheaper like I've read in some other threads. People buying it for $60, or less! Not at UF!!!
 
IMO Pages is nowhere near as good as MS Word. Word for mac is actually not a bad piece of software. I prefer it to the windows version. Keynote is however worth the effort. If you're planning on doing a lot of presentations you'll score extra points with the cool effects and slick presentations.

Another poster said that Pages gives you the option to export to PDF. Actually just about any program in OSX can do that. In the print dialogue you can just choose print to PDF (or something like that). Works perfectly.

If you're going to college chances are you'll be able to pick up a decently priced version of MS Office. Don't buy iWork just cause its Apple. We all love Apple, because generally they make the better products. However when it comes to office apps they have yet to surpass MS.
 
MS office is a world standard. you will need to know it anyway. so go with MS office. some universities offer it a insanely low prices (i heard $42).

personally i love iwork. it's more fun, more creative. keynote is better that PPT. but there is no spreadsheet.

for work and for compatibility i would still recommend office. iwork isn't meant as a replacement for an office program anyway. i have office for mac and it's not too bad. it's actually quite o.k..
 
I don't use a word processor, so I don't have either Office or iWork. If you need a spreadsheet, OpenOffice (well, the Aqua port of it, whatever the thing is called, somethingOffice/J) is pretty good. I have tried their word processor but I find it as annoying to use as Word. Besides, I like writing in a good text editor that I am familiar with a lot better.

Word processors do not help you with your content, which is by far the most important part of a document.
 
First, professors would much rather you hand in your paper than e-mail it to them. Second, MS Office 2004 is great. iWork is marginal at best.
 
Agreed, handing in your papers is much preferred by professors. Only in emergency situations (you can't attend class on the due day or something) do you email your essays.

For that reason, I suggest you don't buy Office until a bit later. Stick to typing out your papers in TextEdit. Chances are, it'll be perfectly fine for what you need. That's what I do, just type it in TextEdit and print it out. No one can tell the difference.

As for iWork, Pages sucks in my opinion. I just don't like it much. However, if you plan to do presentations... then Keynote is most definitely worth the $50. It's so much better than PowerPoint it's not even funny. One snag in that is, you'll have to use your own computer for presentation instead of using theirs. But one cool thing to do is, if you have an iPod with color screen, you can import it into the iPod and take it to the presentation! That'll wow everyone in the class, no question about that! :D
 
Get Office & iWork, as Pages is a nice elementary (with the potential to become more advanced over time) desktop publisher, while Keynote enhances output of PowerPoint.
 
polythene pam said:
I am SO excited about the upcoming update!!! Whoo hoooooo!!!

Anyhow, since I'll be using my iBook for school, I was hoping for some feedback on which software I should purchase: iWork or Office? iwork would cost half of what office costs, but I don't know if a word document on iWork would be compatible with a PC (in case I have to email a paper to a professor or something like that).

Does anyone have any experience using either? I am leaning toward Office because it appears to be more hassle-free. But I could be wrong.

Help!!!

And congratulations to all of us survivors of the Update Drought of 2005!!!
Click to expand...

If you are going to college, check with them. They may offer discounts on M$ software. Do yourself a favor and get MS Office.
 
As a switcher and a college student, I tried NeoOffice and iWork trial and I just couldn't get used to the different set-up. I figured I would spend more time fiddling w/ Mac OSX rather than spend time getting used to a different word processor/ office suite. So I coughed up the dough for MS office 2004. I also agree w/ the previous posters that it is so convenient because you know that your documents will be compatible w/ all the other folks out there.
 
iWork first

I'm gonna vote for iWork being your first purchase, followed by Office when you have the spare change.

In almost all cases, you'll be handing in your papers. If not, as others have said, you have a choice of using TextEdit or using Pages and exporting either to PDF or .txt.

Just make sure the suffix (.pdf or .txt) is added at the end. Remember, Windows gets confuzzled without it.

Pages seems to be an acquired taste. People love it or hate it. I'm on the "love it" side, though I still wish they'd come up with an alternative to the floating palette. True, I still turn to AppleWorks for quick word processing, but Pages is slowly becoming more natural to grab. :)

Most importantly, however, is Keynote. If you have a laptop (since you may have to bring your own to presentations), Keynote is a wonderful investment in your GPA. Office is no match.
 
MS Office for Mac is definitely the best piece of software that Microsoft has ever made ----- most of the functionalities are pretty cool and mac-like ----- you can tell that the team who built it are all hardcore Mac users on OS X

I had high expectations for PAGES, but I've been disappointed too ----- it lacks the intuitiveness of MS Word ---- plus, having the RECORDING feature on MS WORD is VERY helpful for those meetings where you need everything transcribed

my recommendation is Office, especially since the student price is so good

however ----- I would still get iWork, mainly for KEYNOTE --- that app is much better than Powerpoint, IMO
 
I guess all colleges are different. At the University of Florida, from which I graduated a couple of years ago, most of my professors preferred our assignments to be emailed to them. They did not want to deal with the clutter of paper and having to carry a case full of printouts home to grade. That was my personal experience, of course every school is different.

Another common thing was for us to be assigned group projects and we would have to email each other our parts of the project.

So that was why I was worried about the compatibility of my files with PC's, going off to grad school.
 
Students can often get Office for very cheap straight from their school; I got Office 04 for $10. Office offers power while iWork offers ease of use (and a good price), which one is more important is really up to you. However, iWork should be compatible with Word at the basic word processing level. Many professors I know would not be pleased with getting a PDF in the email instead of a Word compatible document, just let that be a precaution.
 
Duff-Man says....for the Educational price, MS Office is the way to go. The Mac Business Unit at MS does do some really good work despite all the flak they get from being part of the "evil empire." Now, if it came down to paying full retail price for MS Office I would look *very* seriously at the alternatives....oh yeah!
 
ahamilt2 said:
Students can often get Office for very cheap straight from their school; I got Office 04 for $10.
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That's a very good point. Students can often get necessary apps cheaply or for free from the school. Guess where my Office and Virtual PC came from :)
 
polythene pam said:
I guess all colleges are different. At the University of Florida, from which I graduated a couple of years ago, most of my professors preferred our assignments to be emailed to them. They did not want to deal with the clutter of paper and having to carry a case full of printouts home to grade. That was my personal experience, of course every school is different.

Another common thing was for us to be assigned group projects and we would have to email each other our parts of the project.

So that was why I was worried about the compatibility of my files with PC's, going off to grad school.
Click to expand...

Makes 100% sense. As others said, if it's for full price, you should look for alternatives. But if there's an educational discount, or super-discounts (like MS Office for $15, which is the price at my school), then definitely go ahead and buy it. There's nothing wrong with Office, it's just a rip off for the full price.
 
I'm planning to make the switch to Macs as well when the new Ibooks come out. I am also kinda poor. Is there any free office type software that comes with The ibook? What is appleworks?
 
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