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Student Pick!! - iWork or Office
- Thread starter rudyrox
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I just put this into the Proofreader in Pages and it didn't have a problem with it:
They falls down the stairs that they have been walking up.
Word did.
should i get Iwork or Mac Office. iv always been a office guy but im afraid of change. lol thanks guys
I had this dilemma several months ago. I chose Office, and now realize that it's the better choice for me. I don't have to worry when sharing documents with other students and professors
It doesn't tell you how to write, but it does find many editorial errors, some of which are grammatical. So the comment that Pages "has no grammar check abilities at all," is wrong.
But since we've already been told authoritatively that "Pages is crap," we need discuss this no further.
While there are some benefits to using word like being more compatible with PCs, its proofreading, and its auto-saving, I totally blows in other ways.
If you use spaces you will be very frustrated at times with word. Word's toolbox messes up, the documents randomly change spaces, and if you have more than one documents open it will have trouble handling them. I have only done the trial of iwork '09 and it seems really good.
I am holding out that iwork '10 will finally put the nail in the coffin and i can trash MS office.
If you use spaces you will be very frustrated at times with word. Word's toolbox messes up, the documents randomly change spaces, and if you have more than one documents open it will have trouble handling them. I have only done the trial of iwork '09 and it seems really good.
I am holding out that iwork '10 will finally put the nail in the coffin and i can trash MS office.
I use Office for assignments and iWork for more personalised documents (such as CVs, invitations, etc). Thing is, as much as I'd like to use Pages over Word, I feel much more comfortable in the blandness of Word to make a simple, black and white, double-spaced printout for submission.
Again, as much as I'd love to use Keynote for all its much better effects, smoother transitions and speedier performance, a great deal of the bells and whistles are lost when you try and play a Keynote exported .ppt file on Office. Ultimately, it becomes a waste of time. There is also the addition of the unnecessary risk that it might all fall apart, and believe you me, that's the last thing you want when you're trying to focus your attention on giving a kick-ass presentation when leading a seminar.
Sadly, Numbers is nowhere near what I need for my spreadsheet work either. Whilst I don't claim to do anything blindingly difficult (I do statistical analysis for business and management alongside my economics and politics degree) the ability to be able to write, simple, effective VB and VBA macros that can give you reams of useful information on a massive series of numbers within a few seconds is a godsend. Whilst Excel for Mac is a garbage version of the Windows one, working with a Windows Excel file with Excel on a Mac is much easier than working with it in Numbers on a Mac.
Office is a crime of convenience. It's r-tard easy to use, it will be the standard issue on your campus, and it's dirt cheap to get through either your institution or Microsoft themselves, via http://www.theultimatesteal.com.
Do they allow Mac software on theultimatesteal.com or is it only for the PC?
To answer the OP's question. I'd go with office. I use iWork for Pages (since there's no publisher). Everything else I use Office.
I think frustrated is an understatement.
I would be using Office in all likelihood if it weren't for this EPIC SNAFU. And I frankly don't give a flying f*ck who's side the problem lies on:
or M$. For that reason I am using iWork '09, and am generally liking it more and more (though it could really use to have a bitter tighter integration with Office, like you said, here's hoping for 2010...iWork. 100%.
Its interface is much more streamlined and easy to use, while Office uses the floating Inspector window to control even the most basic of functions. It's ugly and hard to adjust to, I've personally found.
And if you're doing basic stuff (word processing, a presentation, etc.), iWork is just fine -- even if you need to send it to a PC, just save it as an Office document from inside of iWork. No problem.
Its interface is much more streamlined and easy to use, while Office uses the floating Inspector window to control even the most basic of functions. It's ugly and hard to adjust to, I've personally found.
And if you're doing basic stuff (word processing, a presentation, etc.), iWork is just fine -- even if you need to send it to a PC, just save it as an Office document from inside of iWork. No problem.
For school I woul go office.
This way your work will be 100% compatible with other students and teachers.
iWorks compatibility is not that bad, but why take the chance?
Also, a lot of schools offer free copies (or hugely discounted) of office, so it may be a better deal for you.
With that said, the interface of office is stupid. I dont understand why they made it so terrible. The whole separate toolbox makes no sense to me.. And it also causes havoc with spaces. I wish it had a similar interface to office 2007 on windows.
This way your work will be 100% compatible with other students and teachers.
iWorks compatibility is not that bad, but why take the chance?
Also, a lot of schools offer free copies (or hugely discounted) of office, so it may be a better deal for you.
With that said, the interface of office is stupid. I dont understand why they made it so terrible. The whole separate toolbox makes no sense to me.. And it also causes havoc with spaces. I wish it had a similar interface to office 2007 on windows.
Except that I own Pages, and I'm familiar with "proofreader". It is beyond useless. It will correct MAYBE some minor punctuation errors - that's it. Word's grammar check blows it away.
I see, you are changing your argument from "no grammar checker at all" to something else, without admitting that your original statement was wrong. That's quite a snaky argument.
Anyway, in the interests of accuracy, here are the functions covered by Pages' proofreader (from Mac Help):
As we can clearly see, it is "beyond useless."
Page's proofreader does not check grammar. I have never had it correct a mistake that I have made. If you are prone to making those mistakes, then I'm glad it helps you, but for me - it's useless. I don't make those kinds of mistakes in my writing.
I use word. I know what it can do as I been using it since the very first versions. Pages is a nice concept in word processing however it's auto correction has much to be desired and I don't get that same warm fuzzy feeling like a I do when using word.
iWork by FAR. The presentation of iWork documents is just leagues past Office. It's much easier to deal with layouts in Pages, and there's definitely no comparison to presentation quality from KeyNote. There's one big problem, though, if you're in a math/science field--Excel and Numbers for Mac are both worthless. Numbers is feature-limited and horribly slow, and Excel is just horribly slow.
Unfortunately, the best solution for me is to just keep a small Windows partition that has Office 2003, which is the best office suite ever IMO.
Unfortunately, the best solution for me is to just keep a small Windows partition that has Office 2003, which is the best office suite ever IMO.
You said it has no grammar checking function at all. You said it may only find some punctuation errors. This is incorrect; it does check for the grammatical errors listed above, and does so fairly effectively. For my purposes, even this level of editorial judgement goes a bit too far, because I really don't want my computer telling me how to write (I'd like to turn off the "jargon" checking function, for one). My experience with grammar checkers is that they're far too aggressive, not finding errors so much as trying to be a writing teacher. Maybe some people feel the need for this. Personally, I find it annoying.
In any event, the bottom line is, Pages has a basic grammar checker. Perhaps it's not as comprehensive as some feel they need, but it does have one.
LSU provides Office for Mac free, and I used it for a little bit. I chose to go to iWork because it was faster, and better in my opinion. I guess I just don't need the program to check everything for me, but that is my choice. IMO if you have to pay for it, get iWork.
If you're used to Office, stick with Office. I personally think it's stronger in writing research papers and its formatting makes more sense to me.
However, I think Pages is pretty robust as well, and I like using it for general notetaking. Office feels a little cumbersome for this purpose, but I still prefer using MS Word for papers.
Also, I really like Numbers because it feels fast and makes sense to me. The formulas are pretty easy, it runs fast, and the charts it makes are beautiful. Excel has very heavyweight functions, but feels a bit clunky. As a non-business user, Numbers is good enough for me.
So yeah, if you're used to Office, stick to Office. You'll save money and probably be more productive without learning a new office suite.
However, I think Pages is pretty robust as well, and I like using it for general notetaking. Office feels a little cumbersome for this purpose, but I still prefer using MS Word for papers.
Also, I really like Numbers because it feels fast and makes sense to me. The formulas are pretty easy, it runs fast, and the charts it makes are beautiful. Excel has very heavyweight functions, but feels a bit clunky. As a non-business user, Numbers is good enough for me.
So yeah, if you're used to Office, stick to Office. You'll save money and probably be more productive without learning a new office suite.
Sadly, no. But they do offer Vista x64 Ultimate and Office Ultimate Edition for approximately £70 altogether, so it is still a rather sweet deal
should i get Iwork or Mac Office. iv always been a office guy but im afraid of change. lol thanks guys
iWorks. Just all I need. Not perfect, but a great product.
iWork.
I owned MS Offices from 1999 up until around 2004 and then stopped and switched when iWork came out. MS Office is ok, but very expensive and could be temperamental in past releases. iWork was pretty clunky at first, but now it is almost brilliant. The compatibility is excellent. And it is CHEAP for a much more user friendly piece of software.
Being enrolled in English at university I use iWork for all assignments. Never made less than an A so far. If you need to learn MS Office for work, it will take you about a day if you know iWork. Don't sweat that crap. I was using Word again shortly last year but it choked up on me continually and bombed papers.... do - not - want.
I owned MS Offices from 1999 up until around 2004 and then stopped and switched when iWork came out. MS Office is ok, but very expensive and could be temperamental in past releases. iWork was pretty clunky at first, but now it is almost brilliant. The compatibility is excellent. And it is CHEAP for a much more user friendly piece of software.
Being enrolled in English at university I use iWork for all assignments. Never made less than an A so far. If you need to learn MS Office for work, it will take you about a day if you know iWork. Don't sweat that crap. I was using Word again shortly last year but it choked up on me continually and bombed papers.... do - not - want.
Get Office, your professors are going to be using it as is nearly everyone else in the academic world. The last thing you need to be dealing with is formatting issues when your at the last hour before your project/paper is due.
As an aside. If you really want to be on the ball, learn LaTeX, it is what is used to format pretty well all documents that end up getting published.
As an aside. If you really want to be on the ball, learn LaTeX, it is what is used to format pretty well all documents that end up getting published.
you don't know that there's a free downloadable 30-day trial of iwork on the apple download page? i mean, you can't miss it. it's #4 in the top downloads tab.