Which one is better?

[esadb]

Hi,

Got my macbook about a month ago and well ive been on christmas vacation so ive been playing around with it for a bit.

Since classes are about to start up soon again my question is whats better iWork 08 or using MS Office 08?

Ive been a longtime pc user so all ive ever used was MS office and i liked the MS Office 2007 for windows.

Since i do a fair amount of technical reports and biggest use it word and excel im wondering which one the two suites is better on the MAC to use.

Thanks

 

[esadb]

no need MODS can delete this thread.

I guess that Iwork is not compatible with ms office and i do exchange documents with other users who are PC users..

so i guess office08 it is for me

 

[madmaxmedia]

Is it possible to try them first? I think it's going to be a very subjective thing.

This being MacRumors, you will get some people bashing Office just because. I think Office 08 is fine. It loads a bit slower than iWork apps, but opening either the second time is pretty fast anyways. I like the new Office interface much better than the old, and finally it's a Universal binary.

I like iWork's simpler interface, but both programs are going to have a learning curve once you start doing more power user type stuff. I was doing some spreadsheet charts for a presentation and found advantages and disadvantages when trying both Numbers and Excel. With Numbers it was generally easier to make more attractive graphs, but there were a couple of functions that were missing so had to switch to Excel for certain stuff.

The one app where IMO it's a no-contest win for iWork is KeyNote. PowerPoint really seems like an ugly dinosaur compared to KeyNote, and I can't really think of any pro's for PowerPoint. I think this reflects the fact that KeyNote is the oldest of the iWork apps, so has had more time to mature in development. I think that bodes well for the rest of iWork. At the same time I think Microsoft is paying attention to Mac Office, and this will only increase over time since Mac platform in general has gained market share.

 

[madmaxmedia]

no need MODS can delete this thread.

I guess that Iwork is not compatible with ms office and i do exchange documents with other users who are PC users..

so i guess office08 it is for me

You can save/export iWork documents into Office format. But if you are going to be doing it all day, the compatibility will depend on the complexity of your documents. Basic Word and Excel docs are going to be fine.

I use KeyNote to create presentations, even when the final destination is going to be a PowerPoint presentation on a Windows PC. The presentations carry over great, but I do check over every slide to make sure- sometimes a bullet point is missing or something like that.

 

[ChrisA]

no need MODS can delete this thread.

I guess that Iwork is not compatible with ms office

Really? the Apple software does a good job of reading/wring MS Office files.

You might also say the MS Office 08 is "not compatible with ms office" because MS removes visual basic macros from the product and broke compatibility.

A Thirs option id Open Office. It works nearly perfectly with MS Office and Open Office is free,