iwork vs office

hey guys and gals,

so for mac users out there - is iwork worth purchasing? i've been using microsoft office for mac and I find it slow and buggy and I hear good things about iwork (obviously from apple) and I need some testimonials!

so if anyone has used it or have used both and can compare the two, you would help out a fellow watmmer out very muchly :)

cheers

ps: happy friday

pss: fuck I missed the deadline by 12 minutes

If it's for anything job/school-related, and if you have strict formatting requirements and need to trade docs back and forth with MS office users, then stick with what you have.

If it's really just for personal use, or if you don't care about formatting getting fucked to hell when you send it to someone running office, then iWork is rather nice.

Well, Numbers kind of sucks as a spreadsheet app.

Edit: I have both, and let me put it this way. iWork came with the computer. I had to buy Office later on.

for some things iwork is better and more intuitive. for instance, the integration of iwork is far better than that of office, so al the crap of copy/pasting and having to suffer for getting the right lay-out are virtually a thing of the past on the mac-side. but from a functionality and compatibility point of view, there's no real alternative to ms office. the beta 2010 version is a free download. throw in bootcamp or virtual box and you're almost there. i don't have experience with the mac version of ms office. and with the virtualization technologies i really don't have to either. you neither.

Office is also available for os x. I like keynote very much. It's much better than PowerPoint. iWork is not as advaced as office but for normal stuff it's better as the workflow is much better

I've just stuck with using Office, I find Word and Powerpoint pretty straightforward and Excel can be really annoying, but I heard the iWork equivalent is shitty.

Pages > Word

Word is annoying as fuck to run on a Mac, and yes, it is SLOW.

If you're only really going to be typing up documents then I'd say definitely go for iWork; Pages can use .doc files so compatibility shouldn't be a problem.

Identify your need and make a decision based on that. I use open office, but that's cause I don't have to integrate with an office environment. If textedit gave a better indication of how many pages you had written, I would use that in a heartbeat.

my only experience is with office. although i've used macs most of my life. just recently made the transition from mac to pc. i usually stay away from mac built in programs like garage band and whatever starts with i.

  On 6/5/2010 at 11:32 AM, goDel said:

but from a functionality and compatibility point of view, there's no real alternative to ms office. the beta 2010 version is a free download.

and this thing extends your trial to 180 days

Just to throw a tangent into the thread, as it's free why not give (Edit: as chenGOD suggested too) OpenOffice a go - http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/

OO's excuse for powerpoint is dreadful though.

Why don't you just use Open Office?? It's free and compatible w/ Office...

edit: Oh, whoops lol. For real though I like it. and I never used powerpoint before, so I don't know it's shortcomings

  On 6/6/2010 at 2:51 AM, kaini said:

OO's excuse for powerpoint is dreadful though.

Powerpoint is dreadful too, so it all balances out.

google docs :)

+

ms word/power point/whatever viewer

+

open office if you really need to have something installed.

I don't like pages (maybe they updated it) because it only saves to an overly specific file format.

Powerpoint on Mac works wonderful for me, I've never used Keynote. I HATE Excel for Mac with a passion though. It's a fucking nightmare for me.