try both of the trials for office and i work andd see which u like. there are also free alteernatives such as openoffice, neooffice, and ibm's lotus symphony
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My New Macbook Pro - Should I buy Office?
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How long does the iWork demo last? Is it based on days from the initial download, or on the number of times you open it and use it? THanks.
I am leaning towards just using iWork. Hopefully, I can get by. If not, I will probably try NeoOffice. If that is not to my liking, then I may have to shell out the $ for Office for Macs.
I am leaning towards just using iWork. Hopefully, I can get by. If not, I will probably try NeoOffice. If that is not to my liking, then I may have to shell out the $ for Office for Macs.
If you think sending docs out in .doc format from Office 2008 is going to guarantee no formatting errors you are going to be sorely disappointed.
The Office .doc format is simply incapable of describing a document in such a way that another version of Office will open it and present it just the way you saw it on your screen. The only way to guarantee that is to send documents in a format that is capable of reproducing the exact page layout and that is PDF.
What you can do to ensure that documents travel as well as possible is make sure you learn to use styles and formatting correctly unlike 99% of Office users who simply figure how it looks on their screen is just fine and send it as is. The latter is the main reason why documents often don't survive the trip or look messed up in another package such as iWork or NeoOffice. It is possible to create documents which render well in all programs but the layout engine of each may well change the location of page breaks and such and this is why the use of styles is so important since it is similar to the way that HTML works.
Also, FYI, I recently had a doc written in Office 2004 sent to me and when I opened it in Office 2004 on my Mac a number of the images were missing and replaced by a large red X. Office 2000 for Windows did the same thing. NeoOffice and iWork both opened the doc fine and showed the images. Weird huh?
You want to guarantee formatting, PDF is the boy. You want to collaborate with people, make sure you use styles and formatting and limit your use of fancy fonts. Simple really.
I agree with most you have said. PDF is your guarantee to have your document look the way you want it to look no matter what. I know though at my job and school they want it to be submitted as a .doc file and I can't do PDF unfortunately.
My suggestion still is to just download the free trials at the same time and find out how to format, save and open files between the two programs without hassle. I still suggest as a college student, Office will give you less of a headache in this type of department. If you were just writing documents for yourself then iWork would be totally a fine program and is better in some ways too. I'm sure you can use iWork exclusively but it might take some learning about its limits when you save to a word file.
Plus to other posters, I've had word crash only once last year- are you guys doing something special with it? You are all making me worried because I just got 2008. Hasn't given me trouble yet but maybe I need to play around with iWork as well this summer and take my own advice.