I'll admit you obviously have more experience with both of them than I do, but my time with both showed me that there's more you can do with Office than you can Pages.
Even among the simple, expected things, like layout and formatting, images borders, drop shadows, effects, you have more options and more control over the end result in Office than you do in Pages. Granted, Pages gives you nicer results with less effort, which makes it the better for your average home user/college student. But if I were designing something for publishing, and I wanted that extra something to make it stand out from the rest, I'd probably go with Office.
I won't say Pages is better because it's more elegant and streamlined than Word, and I won't say Word is better because it allows for a finer level of control. Much like anything, it all depends on what you need and what you want.
