Just picked up a Mac, which is better? iWork '08 or Microsoft Office '08?

Question

So I'm just starting college and picked up a MacBook. I've been debating on what i should get for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. I'm going to get either Microsoft Office '08 or iWork. I'm comfortable with office seeing that I used it all through high school and middle school on my home PC, but don't have any ideas about iWork. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Microsoft office.

Answer 2

I strongly suggest Open Office. It is compatible with MS Office formats plus a few more that MS Office can't handle. It is also a free download, which is good news for a college student. And it is cross platform, so it will run on any computer OS.

It has a spreadsheet package and slide presentation package as well.

However the program that, IMO, is the best for formatting documents is TeX/LaTeX. The presentation and layout is gorgeous. Word and other word processor output look ugly, amateurish and clunky in comparison.

LaTeX is also free.

Answer 3

I use iWork 08 for my high school HW and graphs (on my MacBook)

Keynote is stunning, Pages can export documents as word .doc files and .pdf too.  Numbers is alright, it gets the job done but some features are missing.

Answer 4

MS office! 90% of the world uses it and it will better for u

Answer 5

Office '08. iWork is great and all, but Pages just can't stand up to the very matured Word for Mac. Excel is much better than Numbers. Keynote is better than PowerPoint. I have Office 04 and iWork 08 on my MacBook and I need both simply because I am used to Office, but I like the GUI of iWork. Honestly, try the test drive of iWork, and see how it works. (It's on Apple.com under the downloads section, I think.)

Answer 6

If you are going into a area of Law or Business, then Office is the defacto standard in your case.

But if you are in another major, and want something reliable and cheap (and you are not going to be using advanced spreadsheets) then you cant go wrong with iWork.

Pages is a pretty decent Word app, but Keynote is the true gem, offering much more creative freatures then Powerpoint. The only downside is that you lose 50% of the cool trasitions when exporting to Powerpoint, so you must export to a Quicktime movie to retain the effects.