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iWork vs. Office 2004

  • iWork '05

    Votes: 16 27.1%
  • Office 2004

    Votes: 43 72.9%

  • Total voters
    59

SuperSnake2012

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 11, 2005
824
19
NY
Which one do you guys like better? The fact that iWork costs $50 and Office costs $150 makes me want iWork a little more :D
 
SuperSnake2012 said:
Which one do you guys like better? The fact that iWork costs $50 and Office costs $150 makes me want iWork a little more :D
It depends on what you need it for. I find Pages quite useful.
 
This is a really difficult pole to answer. In some ways, iWork is better because it has Keynote for presentations and Pages for light desktop publishing. On the other side, you have Word, which is the standard, and Excel. For now I have to go with Office since it is more friendly in the Windows world. Ask again after a few revisions of iWork and see what every one thinks.
 
I only ever use the word processor in any office suite. I have come to really love Abiword and even just use TextEdit many times. TE has spell check from the os and all the basic tools needed for simple word processing.
 
office 2k4

I tried Pages 30 day sample on my ibook 1.33ghz w/ 1gb ram and it just felt unbearably slow. That's not to say that office is fast. In fact, I find it annoyingly slow as well, but it is definitely usable. I don't do powerpoint/keynote stuff, so i cant speak on that, and I do use and am satisfied with excel, but there is no iWork equivalent.

I type about 80 wpm, so it's important to me that my WP keeps up.
 
I said Office because it is such an essential for college students. Professors expect you to have Word and PowerPoint, and it's nice and easy to send files to friends. Besides, iWork has only two programs, Office has four that I use quite often.
 
SuperSnake2012 said:
Which one do you guys like better? The fact that iWork costs $50 and Office costs $150 makes me want iWork a little more :D

Actually, for most people, iWork is $79 and Office is $499. Is Office more than six time better than iWork? I don't think so...
 
IJ Reilly said:
Actually, for most people, iWork is $79 and Office is $499. Is Office more than six time better than iWork? I don't think so...
True, however i bought mine with edu price plus it was subsidized by my school. Cost me $25.
 
Until iWork comes with a spreadsheet program, Office will be necessary for me. I don't do a lot of work in Excel, but there's the occasional doc I need excel for, and that OpenOffice chokes on.
 
Can anyone say Open Office?
Then you can buy iWork (which is cheaper than Office), but still have both "Microsoft" Office, and iWork.
PS - I don't have Open Office (So I really don't know why I just recommended it) but has anyone here used it before, if so how do you like it?
You'll need something that can read/write Microsoft Word files, it has just become the standard for the World (unfortunately).
 
EricNau said:
You'll need something that can read/write Microsoft Word files, it has just become the standard for the World (unfortunately).

iWork does a pretty good job both opening Word files and exporting to Word docs. In fact, if it's text you're interested in, TextEdit does a fine job opening Word files.

BTW, OpenOffice for the Mac still requires X11.
 
Keynote > PowerPoint
Pages
apprBlue.gif
Word
Excel > Nothing


Pages and Word each have their strengths and weaknesses. Keynote is pretty much outright superior to PowerPoint. But nothing matches Excel.
 
IJ Reilly said:
iWork does a pretty good job both opening Word files and exporting to Word docs. In fact, if it's text you're interested in, TextEdit does a fine job opening Word files.

BTW, OpenOffice for the Mac still requires X11.
There is an OpenOffice program called NeoOfficeJ, it doesn't require X11, however, it has more the look and feel of a Windows *spit*
 
GFLPraxis said:
Keynote > PowerPoint
Pages
apprBlue.gif
Word
Excel > Nothing


Pages and Word each have their strengths and weaknesses. Keynote is pretty much outright superior to PowerPoint. But nothing matches Excel.

Best comparison I've seen in a while.
 
Even with the $100 price differential, I would go with MS Office. Despite Word being maligned and even reviled by some, it has become a de facto standard for millions and that cannot be casually dismissed. Old habits and widespread compatibility tip the scales for many users.
 
also went for office.

although i've been having problems with it recently. gets stuck loading and makes me need to reboot :( think i'll give it a reinstall later as it's been fine so far
 
I think iWork is not yet a complete productivity suites as it does not have spread sheet program. I have iWork but I end up using Office X most of the time because Word is one strong word processing program (for some, it gets too complicated as MS piles on features and add ons).

By the way, if you save your work in Page in a native format, can Windose's PC can open it? I like the intuitive desktop publishing features of Page; but, if the page layout you set up in Page cannot be viewed by Window's machines, that would be a problem. I use my Mac for making marketing brochures and materials even though my company uses Windows XP for all of its employees' PCs.
 
Deepdale said:
Even with the $100 price differential, I would go with MS Office. Despite Word being maligned and even reviled by some, it has become a de facto standard for millions and that cannot be casually dismissed. Old habits and widespread compatibility tip the scales for many users.

I wouldn't dismiss Office casually. I would dismiss it with prejudice.

And the real price difference is $420 for most people.
 
YS2003 said:
I think iWork is not yet a complete productivity suites as it does not have spread sheet program. I have iWork but I end up using Office X most of the time because Word is one strong word processing program (for some, it gets too complicated as MS piles on features and add ons).

By the way, if you save your work in Page in a native format, can Windose's PC can open it? I like the intuitive desktop publishing features of Page; but, if the page layout you set up in Page cannot be viewed by Window's machines, that would be a problem. I use my Mac for making marketing brochures and materials even though my company uses Windows XP for all of its employees' PCs.

Once again: Pages documents can be exported to Word documents. Word documents can be imported into Pages. If your objective is the complete preservation of formatting and layout, then Word won't work for you either, unless you want to stick with Ariel and New Times Roman -- and I don't know any designer who'd put up with that. For the preservation of format you need pdf, which of course, you've got with Pages.
 
EricNau said:
There is an OpenOffice program called NeoOfficeJ, it doesn't require X11, however, it has more the look and feel of a Windows *spit*

AbiWord is similar -- essentially a freeware Word clone. Yuck.
 
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