ppc office vs. univ. iWork, speed>features?

[Timepass]

And, unless it's your professor, when they say you "must" do something in MSOffice format, because it's 'universal', you should tell them to go find a non-proprietary format, and quit demanding that you spend hundreds of dollars for crappy software to match their particular preferences. Or, like i said, quietly do it in Open Office. [the 'universality' of MSWord format is one of my pet peeves--someone sends me something in MSWord format, i ignore it if i don't care, or request that they provide it in a useable format, if i do.]

Umm yeah you do that and you will fail. It is NEVER a good idea to piss off the person who controls the grade. Also the cost of office is pocket change compared to the cost of school. It the default standard of the world so get used to it.

On that note I had a great laugh watching a student get chew out by the prof when he trade to do something like that. Student got told off and this include the part about Teacher was the prof and he makes the rules. Follow by the part that the school gives it to use for free so the entire cost argument just went away. That and the school puts them on there computer free for the student to use. I though the guy deservice it and I think the money argument is stupid. How much do we spend on text books every sesmter. Top it off I spent over 300 so far on software for school and i know that going to go higher as I need some more software to do different things in class.

 

[woodelf]

isn't it just easier to suck it and see instead of picking up fights with people. its equally 'demanding' of you to ask that of people even though its a simple click away. and you also have to realise that in the real world not everyone will be so nice and compliant w/ your requests- especially if it is a mailout or something like that.

I'm in the real world. If someone sent you a WordPerfect-format file (or a Pages file, or a Freehand file), what would you do? You'd either open it with whatever app you had, if you could, or you'd say 'hey, i need this in a non-proprietary format'. Just because MSWord is common, doesn't change the situation. If i don't have it, i don't have it, and it's a proprietary format. Like i said, if i *have* to suck it up, that's what Open Office is for. But if i don't have to, i won't.

i used to use openoffice as a subversive gesture until one day i had to print an essay out at uni. oo-> ms completely messed up the formating and i was marked down for bad presentation (didn't have time to correct it- all tables, footnotes, pages, tabs, everything was gone/ went completely wierd, there were extra section breaks everywhere god what a mess)

i hope they have fixed it now. using an opensource app is amazing ideally, but i think unless you have your own setup that is not dependent on other people (eg. the university network) then approach them carefully (ie test them out before the crunch)

Well, if you have a MacBook, presumably you just take your computer into the computer lab and print directly from it--so, yes, you have your own setup.

As for compatibility: like i said, i have only rarely run into any formatting stuff, and, then, i didn't actually know what the original looked like, so it's possible the original was badly-formatted, too. More importantly, the sort of formatting mess-up you describe can just as easily occur with two machines running the same version of MSWord, much less different versions. Heck, i've seen those sorts of things happen with MSWord (yes, the latest version, though on MSWindows), on the same machine, with no obvious user changes. I consider it pretty flaky in that regard. If you need absolute formatting guarantees, print to PDF, or use a page-layout program (like InDesign). The bridge from Open Office to MSOffice i consider no more of a contributing factor to file-format/-compatibility issues than MSOffice itself. YMMV.

 

[woodelf]

Umm yeah you do that and you will fail. It is NEVER a good idea to piss off the person who controls the grade. Also the cost of office is pocket change compared to the cost of school. It the default standard of the world so get used to it.

You obviously missed the "unless it's your professor" part of my statement. If the professor says it then, yeah, you pretty much have to do it. Though i've certainly never (in over a decade of college) encountered anyone who cared what program we used, outside of functional stuff, or courses training on a specific piece of software (like my graphic design courses). Even in physics lab, where they provided custom-built software much of the time, they wouldn't've cared if you wrote your own--but any problems with the software would then be on your head.

And, in any case, for 99% of tasks, Open Office is seamlessly transparent to MSOffice, so i don't know what the problem would be. The spreadsheet and writing components are particularly compatible.

All this is mostly beside the point. The original question was whether to go with iWork or MSOffice, given that MSOffice is more expensive and not yet Universal. So, whatever others may think of the price, the original questioner considers the price differential relevant. Several people suggested to start out with iWork, and see if MSOffice was really necessary. I'm suggesting to start out with Open Office or Open Office + iWork. If it actually turns out that MSOffice is necessary, the poster is no worse off than if they hadn't installed/used Open Office. It being free and all (and already Universal). And, my personal suspicion is that if s/he goes this route, s/he won't ever end up needing MSOffice. But if they do, they haven't lost anything by using Open Office in the interim.

 

[QCassidy352]

I'm surprised at all of the complaints about Office under Rosetta. I'd say Office 2004 runs just as well under rosetta on my macbook (2 Ghz, 1 GB RAM) as it did on my ibook G4 (1.33 Ghz, 1.5 GB RAM). This is something I worried about before buying an intel, but honestly, it's a total non-issue. I never have to wait at all using Word under rosetta.

 

[benthewraith]

I'm surprised at all of the complaints about Office under Rosetta. I'd say Office 2004 runs just as well under rosetta on my macbook (2 Ghz, 1 GB RAM) as it did on my ibook G4 (1.33 Ghz, 1.5 GB RAM). This is something I worried about before buying an intel, but honestly, it's a total non-issue. I never have to wait at all using Word under rosetta.

Cuz it has the RAM.

On another note (and slightly OT), on the box of iWork '06, Scott Speedman (who plays Michael on Underworld Evolution) is sitting there.

 

[Some_Big_Spoon]

Pages is a page layout program, not a word processor. It can do it, it's just more of a process than simply opening up Word and knocking something out. Pages is great and I use it often for projects, but if I'm writing a letter or resume or such, then Word, unfortunately, wins on that front.

From a speed perspective, Pages is fast as a uni-bi, but it depends on what you're using things for. A fast program with a slow workflow isn't as helpful as vice versa.

 

[regre7]

I think I'm going to get iWork '06 as soon as I can, once I get some money. I like the idea that you can use the Apple remote to control your presentations in Keynote. I feel like Steve!

 

[Xeem]

Although I've used MS Office extensively in the past, and the little experience I've had with iWork has left me impressed , I have never been in a document situation that I haven't been able to resolve using either OpenOffice/NeoOffice or Appleworks (which came with my iBook).

Free software FTW.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Pages is a page layout program, not a word processor. It can do it, it's just more of a process than simply opening up Word and knocking something out. Pages is great and I use it often for projects, but if I'm writing a letter or resume or such, then Word, unfortunately, wins on that front.

I'm sorry, but this is just plain nonsense. Anyone who'd say this hasn't really spent enough time with Pages, or they'd know it wasn't true. A blank page in Pages is the same as a blank page in Word. Where Pages breaks away from the pack (and Word in particular) is in the setting up of templates to make "just writing a letter" far easier than starting with a completely blank page every time. And just to editorialize a bit further, if there's one thing that Word does not do well, it's get you going quickly on a short and simple document. Microsoft apparently assumes that everyone is writing a doctoral dissertation every time they fire up Word.

 

[benthewraith]

I'm sorry, but this is just plain nonsense. Anyone who'd say this hasn't really spent enough time with Pages, or they'd know it wasn't true. A blank page in Pages is the same as a blank page in Word. Where Pages breaks away from the pack (and Word in particular) is in the setting up of templates to make "just writing a letter" far easier than starting with a completely blank page every time. And just to editorialize a bit further, if there's one thing that Word does not do well, it's get you going quickly on a short and simple document. Microsoft apparently assumes that everyone is writing a doctoral dissertation every time they fire up Word.

And for the most part, look at Microsoft's presence in business. It's the leading office program, does what people need it to do, etc. For student papers (requiring MLA and AP? Format), for business reviews, for said doctoral dissertations. Simply put, that was always Microsoft's intentions. If you wanted templates and all that, go buy Microsoft Works.

EDIT: Hmm, though that is the name of the program, it also seems to be a pun on words. Interesting.

 

[YS2003]

I admit MS Office is a great app, even though I am not a big fan of MS (except for their Tablet PC edition). I use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all the time at work. I am also mixing in CS2 and iWorks for my work and personal projects.

Once of the good thing about Microsoft's "monopoly" is the standardization of the disparate formats into MS Office formats in the business world.

I have a client who sent me the documents in Word Perfect file; I asked him to re-sent it to me in MS Word or PDF.

 

[celebrian23]

I get office for free, so I have no reason to buy iwork. If Apple ever just sold keynote, I'd buy it because it has so much over powerpoint, but pages offers me nothing I can't do on word (for my needs), but with more compatibility issues. And I don't want to spend $79 when I'd only use half the package.

 

[IJ Reilly]

And for the most part, look at Microsoft's presence in business. It's the leading office program, does what people need it to do, etc. For student papers (requiring MLA and AP? Format), for business reviews, for said doctoral dissertations. Simply put, that was always Microsoft's intentions. If you wanted templates and all that, go buy Microsoft Works.

EDIT: Hmm, though that is the name of the program, it also seems to be a pun on words. Interesting.

Microsoft's lock on the productivity suite market is mainly due to their ownership of the file formats, which produces a "need to own" from those who otherwise have no "desire to own." I'd venture to guess that the vast majority of Word users have little to no knowledge of 80% of Word's features. Based on the Word documents I receive in my work, I'd say that this estimate is almost certainly generous.

Software should do the things it does well, not attempt to implement hundreds of features if it does few of them better than poorly. This is one aspect of software design that Microsoft has never understood properly.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I get office for free, so I have no reason to buy iwork. If Apple ever just sold keynote, I'd buy it because it has so much over powerpoint, but pages offers me nothing I can't do on word (for my needs), but with more compatibility issues. And I don't want to spend $79 when I'd only use half the package.

If you get something for free, then any cost for a competing product is going to be too much.

Still, your analysis seems peculiar to me. You should price out PowerPoint (what most people pay for it) and compare that to the price of Keynote (which beats the stuffing out of PowerPoint) plus Pages. Two for the price of half of one -- this is still too expensive?

 

[mkrishnan]

Getting back to the Rosetta issue... I am seriously considering a MacBook at some point in the future (although I think that what I want is to buy one at a point where there's a clean date for refurb'd models... which means that I probably cannot until Rev. B is available refurb, which means probably early next year).

But since there were disagreeing voices on Rosetta, I wanted to point out that MacTouch published fairly intensive benchmarks comparing a PB/G4, an Intel iMac, and an MBP (I didn't see this elsewhere in the thread...sorry if it has already been mentioned). There is a confound in that the MBP has more RAM and a slower processor than the iMac, but the results are interesting, and seem to contradict some things I would've expected.

But in short... across the board, the two Intel macs are modestly slower than a PB G4 / 15" / 1.5GHz (I think this is before the "Widescreen" PBs but I am not sure?). In a few areas that may or may not be a big deal to the average user, the difference is more in the abysmal than modest range (there's an insert-large-JPG example in there).

And interestingly, the iMac with the slightly faster processor and less RAM does better... I would've expected more of a benefit in RAM....

Link to the benchmarks.