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Student Pick!! - iWork or Office
- Thread starter rudyrox
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iWork or Office 2004
Ok, bottom line is iWork is cheaper and does the same things. If you can find an Office 2004 for around 50 bucks then go for that. Especially if you have a PPC.
If you are a student you should be getting a pretty large discount, so again, check with your campus.
Ok, bottom line is iWork is cheaper and does the same things. If you can find an Office 2004 for around 50 bucks then go for that. Especially if you have a PPC.
If you are a student you should be getting a pretty large discount, so again, check with your campus.
I'd imagine that you will find the same comments by me in older threads on the same subject:
The problems with Pages' grammar checker are legitimate complaints. I tend to pick most of them up when I proofread anyway, but Word is my preferred assistant.
On the other hand, Pages kicks butt when it comes to layout. It handles images soooo much better than Word. It has better templates than Word. I find manipulating text formatting much easier in Pages. When it comes to formatting Pages is such a breeze (once you work out where everything is). Pages also has a nice full screen mode!
So, what's the solution? I use both. I tend to write in word and then touch up in Pages. Pages will open docx files with very few problems.
That last point reminds me of something very important: Pages imports fairly well except with heavily annotated documents. I recently had a problem with a document in which I had inserted and deleted several endnotes in Word (trying to pare down 10 pages worth of endnotes!) and then opened the document in Pages. Pages completely screwed up the notes. There were ghost notes - empty boxes where I had previously deleted notes - that messed up the numbering and Pages also dropped consistent formatting on the notes. The problem seems to have something to do with the way that Word deletes formatting - it doesn't do it cleanly so there are bits of code left over. I ended up cleaning the text myself because I didn't want to have to face Word's inability to deal with images... tells you a lot , eh?
The problems with Pages' grammar checker are legitimate complaints. I tend to pick most of them up when I proofread anyway, but Word is my preferred assistant.
On the other hand, Pages kicks butt when it comes to layout. It handles images soooo much better than Word. It has better templates than Word. I find manipulating text formatting much easier in Pages. When it comes to formatting Pages is such a breeze (once you work out where everything is). Pages also has a nice full screen mode!
So, what's the solution? I use both. I tend to write in word and then touch up in Pages. Pages will open docx files with very few problems.
That last point reminds me of something very important: Pages imports fairly well except with heavily annotated documents. I recently had a problem with a document in which I had inserted and deleted several endnotes in Word (trying to pare down 10 pages worth of endnotes!) and then opened the document in Pages. Pages completely screwed up the notes. There were ghost notes - empty boxes where I had previously deleted notes - that messed up the numbering and Pages also dropped consistent formatting on the notes. The problem seems to have something to do with the way that Word deletes formatting - it doesn't do it cleanly so there are bits of code left over. I ended up cleaning the text myself because I didn't want to have to face Word's inability to deal with images... tells you a lot , eh?
A person may prefer Word's grammar checking, and say so, but the complaint that Pages has no grammar checkering functions at all is not true. Just trying to correct the record.
Seconding this. I've got both pages and word but have found myself increasingly using google docs. It's great to be able to log on and write stuff no matter where you are. I do all my assignments this way now. Also great to share a doc with others for collaboration. I think it's under-utilised and under-appreciated for what it offers. It's also wonderfully simple so you can concentrate on writing.
Google Docs is a wonderful thing. It is 100% free, and I use it when I am in a computer lab and need to easily access the file I created.
I must say that I do prefer having an actual, full-featured Word Processor, but Doc's is certainly powerful for a web-based utility.
Were I to have more of a respect for silly little things like copyrights, I would probably be using something like this out of sheer cheap-ness
Another vote for Office.
You won't have to export it as a certain MS document like in iWork and you don't have to worry about formatting issues. It just works. (Teachers won't exept .pages etc...)
Don't get me wrong, if I wasn't a student I would definitely use iWork (I actually have iWork on my MB so I can vouch for all of this, as I am a college student). It's just a pain to have to export and stuff. Office works great for the normal word processing, labs, study guides, etc. just fine.
You won't have to export it as a certain MS document like in iWork and you don't have to worry about formatting issues. It just works. (Teachers won't exept .pages etc...)
Don't get me wrong, if I wasn't a student I would definitely use iWork (I actually have iWork on my MB so I can vouch for all of this, as I am a college student). It's just a pain to have to export and stuff. Office works great for the normal word processing, labs, study guides, etc. just fine.
Ya, true...
Also, pretty much every editable file that you will get from a teacher is either in .doc .xls or .ppt
Just kind of a pain with iWork because it will get the formatting all messed up sometimes. Mostly lab write-ups with Pages.
I wasn't intending to contradict what you'd said earlier. You are absolutely right. There is a grammar checker, but it isn't very robust.
Also, in regards to the OP, one other thing I thought of: compatibility. I don't understand why apple can't make pages backward compatible. I tested out 09 but then couldn't open the files I had made in 09 in 08 (is that clear? - basically you can't open files made in a later edition of pages in an earlier edition). Luckily, I managed to find a steal on 09 on ebay, but really, I wasn't happy about that at all.
IMO, iWork is superior in EVERY way. I don't bother with Office at all. But I also don't have a job where I have to modify/create Word documents.