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Works or Office

A

ajwells1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 21, 2009
28
0
Just want to get people's opinion. I currently have Office on my G4 iMac. I am soon getting a new MacBook Pro and was planning on getting some updated software for it.

2 Questions:
Which program would you reccomend?

Will the Works software open all my word docs? (my wife has many recipes saved)
 
I recommend Works

Pages (iWork word processor) will open your Word documents. And you may export/save in Word format if you prefer.

I much prefer Pages to Word, and even more so Keynote to PowerPoint. Keynote is more powerful, useful, elegant.
 
A bug in ms office affects some of the shift key features in Adobe CS3, so I had to quit Entourage when using CS3. Bought iWork and it's really all I use now. Great value for the money too. No problem opening or exporting to ms office formats either.
 
I like iWork a lot better then Office. I have recommended it to many people and they all seem very happy with it. Office just seems like a big monster on the Mac.

iWork will open Office docs and you can save copies of your files in Office formats for sharing with others that use PCs.
 
I prefer Pages over Word on a Mac. On a PC Word just looks good, on a Mac it looks small and cramped. Personal opinion though.
 
1. I prefer Word on PC (Word on MAC looks tacky)
2. I much prefer Keynote and Numbers to Powerpoint and Excel

I can never find Pages all that attractive... dunno why. I guess it's all about familiarity.
 
For something like recipes and small documents, Works is fine. If you do anything on really large documents, the formatting tends to break down on Pages and any of the open office suites that I have tried.
 
ajwells1 said:
Just want to get people's opinion. I currently have Office on my G4 iMac. I am soon getting a new MacBook Pro and was planning on getting some updated software for it.

2 Questions:
Which program would you reccomend?

Will the Works software open all my word docs? (my wife has many recipes saved)
Click to expand...

If you have Office 2004, it will run fine on a new MacBook Pro and is still a good office suite. If money is tight, stay with that.

If this solely for personal / home use, and you're not exchanging documents with other people much, and you don't mind $79 for software, I really like iWork for home use. It will load *.doc Word files (and Excel and PowerPoint) adequately.

If you're doing big spreadsheets, for personal finance or other, you should demo iWork first. Numbers is pokey compared to Excel with large data sets; try before you buy if that's a concern.

And, if you don't care as much about the pure Apple experience, OpenOffice is high quality. But it doesn't feel "OS X" to me (last I tried, two years ago).
 
Office is ok (though the fanboys here flog iWork), but Works has to be the most miserable piece of software Microsoft has ever release. Do not install it .. ever! (And the OP stated Works not iWork vs. Office)
 
Use iWork. Keynote is much better than any other presentation system. As with the others, i'd say its a toss-up.
 
If you have an older version of Office (v.X or 2004), it will run fine on your new Mac with Rosetta installed. Thus, no rush for you to upgrade. You can download a free trial of both iWork and Office 2008, as well as the other free options mentioned here, and compare them for yourself.

I tend to use Pages as much as possible for basic word processing, and use Word if I need to collaborate with others on a complex document (e.g. my dissertation). If you need to do presentations, Keynote blows away Powerpoint.
 
ajwells1 said:
Just want to get people's opinion. I currently have Office on my G4 iMac. I am soon getting a new MacBook Pro and was planning on getting some updated software for it.

2 Questions:
Which program would you reccomend?

Will the Works software open all my word docs? (my wife has many recipes saved)
Click to expand...

I haven't used Works in years, but remember it as not doing half of what I wanted it to do.
I use MacOffice and Office Enterprise on my MBP & find they both do what I need: amending my thesis that includes a copy of a PowerPoint presentation & sending those to PC-centric bods without problems.
I got both from www.software4students.co.uk though they only ship to UK so sorry if that's a fat lot of use!
As an afterthought I believe Office 2010 is out in its beta stage.
 
I've done a bit of checking on the web on the OP's question, and from what I can tell Works really isn't available for the Mac anymore so I'd have to say Office is his choice based upon the question.
 
colourfastt said:
I've done a bit of checking on the web on the OP's question, and from what I can tell Works really isn't available for the Mac anymore so I'd have to say Office is his choice based upon the question.
Click to expand...

I think he meant iWork, not Works...

And my answer: if you compose yourself, and only distribute in PDF or printed form (in other words, you don't send stuff to other people for them to edit, etc) then iWork is the better of the two. You can open .doc files, but the formatting won't be perfect, but it's readable and all, so if you don't care about perfect formatting, then again, iWork is what you want.

However, if you frequently share work with PC users, who edit your documents and send them to you, etc, and if formatting is important to you (like filling out applications that are written in .doc format, or the such), then Office 2008 would be the better choice.

Me? I got both! :)
 
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