Can anyone see a reason why I should purchase Microsoft Office Student 2004 with iWork '08 now having the Numbers app to import and export to Excel? I know it also covers Word and Power Point I'm just trying to figure out if I would have all my bases covered going into college. Does anyone see any problems I would run into at school if all I had was iWork '08?
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Microsoft Office Student 2004 or iWork '08 for a college student....
- Thread starter dubis07
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Definitely don't buy Microsoft Office 2004 right now, with a new version coming out in January. I got through college using Microsoft Office 2004, but I definitely used pages more. The only time I really used it was to use Excel. I think you would be just fine with iWork. If you absolutely have to use a Microsoft program, you could always find a computer in a computer lab...but I really don't think you'd ever have to.
When term starts download the trial of iWork, this'll give you 30 days in which you can see if it is capable. (For first year work it is probably capable, just). Hopefully this will see you fit until Office 08 comes out, or you can use Neo Office or Open Office and see how well they fit your needs.
i think the best thing would be to just ask the professors what kind of projects you'll be working on. this way you dont blow $125 on office only to find out you could have used iwork, or pay 79 for iwork andthen find out you need to buy office to.
If your prime use of a spreadsheet is going to be exchanging files between it and Excel, then I can't recommend Numbers, its Excel export sucks.
I'm a science major and I find that even Excel doesn't cut it. Usually I'm forced to resort to Maple/Mathematica to get the graphs that I want.
Be aware that Numbers does not do:
error bars
proper scatter plots
curve or linear fitting
If you are a science/engineering student, iWork alone will NOT cut it for you.
My advice is to get both Office 2004 (for Word and Excel) and iWork (for Keynote). It is not that much money with an academic discount.
Or just head to a bittorrent tracker near you (wait, did I just say that?
).
error bars
proper scatter plots
curve or linear fitting
If you are a science/engineering student, iWork alone will NOT cut it for you.
My advice is to get both Office 2004 (for Word and Excel) and iWork (for Keynote). It is not that much money with an academic discount.
Or just head to a bittorrent tracker near you (wait, did I just say that?
).
i dont recomend office for the mac if your files are ever going to touch a pc, Things go wrong all the time for me, especial images. dont realy know how ilife works with word on a pc.
iWork is definitely worse in this regard. I occasionally had problems with missing images with word documents but ever since i realized you have to "insert" them rather than just drag and drop all these issues have gone. I don't have a single compatibility problem with the documents I create now.
upon further research (read: personally using Numbers), i would not rely on Numbers as an Excel replacement. it is good for basic spreadsheet tasks but definitely not an Excel replacement.
Keynote and Pages should be fine for presentations and papers. Pages does lack some functionality compared to Word, but it gets the job done.
Keynote and Pages should be fine for presentations and papers. Pages does lack some functionality compared to Word, but it gets the job done.
I second this advice. My school (Indiana University) offered it for $10 on CD or as a free download through the university network. Most of the state schools have some sort of deal like this as well to my knowledge.
I'd probably go with the one my employer would have me using after college, if you're doing intense stuff with it, and not simple budgets.
That said, another option might be to buy iWork and Excel, and skip the rest of the office suite. Do they offer that to Mac users?
That said, another option might be to buy iWork and Excel, and skip the rest of the office suite. Do they offer that to Mac users?
I'd say go with Office. I used Word for all of my notes during my biology undergrad, and I've been messing around with the Pages trial today and just can't seem to get the layout I prefer. I was hoping to switch over to iWork as I start grad school, but I don't think that's going to happen. Pages doesn't do lists as well as Word, has no (free-draw pen (that I can find) to scribble down little diagrams (did this often in Word) and just altogether feels more geared toward self-publishing via personal websites and blogs than it does for true word-processing (read: it feels pretty, not professional). Maybe I just need to get used to the styles format that Pages is based on, but it doesn't seem, at the very least, like it would make my note-taking/paper writing any easier/faster/better than word, and I'm not THAT much of an apple fanatic to spend extra time trying to get what I want out of Pages just so I can use an apple app. I'll put some more time into iWork to get a better idea, but I'm pretty sure I'll stick with Office once classes start back up.
Oh, and it saves files in a .pages file format. I was under the impression you could just choose the default format to save to, so I could use .doc, but you can't (at least to my limited knowledge). Saving just creates the .pages file, you have to go to "export file" and choose ".doc" in order to get a .doc that you can share (same for pdf, but I honestly never had need to create pdf's in my undergrad career, it was all doc's). It's a minor thing, but an extra unnecessary step. And you will almost undoubtedly have to have most of your files in .doc format for file sharing to your pc using classmates and professors, so save yourself the trouble and use Word. I'm sure your school will have at least some sort of discount on the software.
Oh, and it saves files in a .pages file format. I was under the impression you could just choose the default format to save to, so I could use .doc, but you can't (at least to my limited knowledge). Saving just creates the .pages file, you have to go to "export file" and choose ".doc" in order to get a .doc that you can share (same for pdf, but I honestly never had need to create pdf's in my undergrad career, it was all doc's). It's a minor thing, but an extra unnecessary step. And you will almost undoubtedly have to have most of your files in .doc format for file sharing to your pc using classmates and professors, so save yourself the trouble and use Word. I'm sure your school will have at least some sort of discount on the software.