iWork for a college student?

ive had my macbook pro since january and it is absolutely awesome. However, I have been using NeoOffice and found it to be choppy and overall annoying to use. I am in search of a good word processor program preferably Word 2008 (Office 2008) or Pages (iWork). The question is: Which one should I buy? I know that iWork is beautiful and has tons of sweet layouts. I also know that Office 2008 will be compatible with the rest of the computing world. I am not going into accounting or anything along those lines, so I dont think that I will need any hardcore features that Office 2008 supplies. On the other hand, I dont know if iWork will be missing any possible features that I might need.

Thoughts?

 

I would stick with Office 2008 over iWork. In my opinion, Office is currently much more polished than iWork. However, if you want to try both out, I do believe they both have trials.

 

Office 2008 currently lacks a trial version. iWork does have one, available for download on the Apple website.

There has been a thread somewhat recently related to your question.

As for myself, as I've said in that other thread as well, I'd love to use the much more elegant, and efficient (and, well, therefore "more polished") iWork. However, unfortunately, for compatibility issues alone, I'm stuck with MS Office.

If you're a college student though, you could ask your university computer store/bookstore for MS Office at a really reduced price. Apple's student promotion for iWork is quite meagre. At least you wouldn't end up paying $150 for a labyrinth of a piece of software.

 

i tried to like iWork, but hated "exporting to .doc" for EVERY FILE. Thats something that needs some work by apple i think.

Office is the standard, just buy it, use it, and dont look back. iWork is nice though for sure. Either will be sufficient though.

Try the iWork trial. If it suits your needs, buy it. If not, pony up for office2008. Expect this from a school:

 

I just got Office 2007 at the office. I do not like it. Well, at least I have mixed feelings. Every time I touch a chart, text color or cell color in Excel, I am faced with a compatability warning message. You would think that either M$ or my company IT department would work to eliminate default features which absolutely require xlsx file format. It is an enormous waste of time falling back to the 16 color Office 2003 palette every time I want to save a document.

I had considered Office 2008 for my Mac at home but in light of my frustration with what seems like 5-fold extra clicks to get things done in Office 2007 and the file format bullying, I'm sticking with iwork 08. Excel is significantly better than numbers which in turn is significantly better then openoffice but I will muddle through. I like pages better than word and I love keynote better than powerpoint so Excel is the only tug I feel pulling me toward Office 08. I may wind up still getting office 08 for my wife but she will probably be the only user.

 

I have the exact same feelings. I recently decided to give the iWork trial ago, after several months of hoo hum feelings towards Office 08. While 08 is better than 04, its still sluggish and buggy. So far I have really enjoyed keynote, I quickly tried out numbers, but excel really does c$%p all over it. Yet to really put pages thru the test, but the quick test I did, it appears to be much closer to word and possibly a decent substitute.
Like others have said before, give the iWork trial ago, if its no good then get office08
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I'm also looking best alternative for Neooffice.In Sri Lanka iWork08 is much cheaper than M$ Office08 .Is there any place to download trial office08 & iWork? I can buy iWork08 for $60( Promo Price for MBP/MB/iMac owners) & Office08 S & T $135 .Which is better?(I'm mainly use word & p'point)

 

Exactly. And those dialogue boxes and menus straight out of Word 6.0 for Win 3.1 are plainly annoying.

But then, one has to take into consideration that *full* compatibility is crucial in environments where documents are shared all the time. I believe that should be a major factor in one's decision.

I bought Office for $25 on a university license; but I'm still thinking of getting Pages, which I'd use when I'm *writing*; Word would be mainly for opening files from other people. Though that will likely never take place as I can't spare $70 just for that....

 

Sorry, no trial for Office 08. You have to buy it to try it. Ask about return options at the Apple store. You might be able to bring it back if you don't like it. I just spent an excessive amount of time at ms trying to find evidence of a trial of office for mac. Nope. They want your money up front, sight unseen. After my experience with office 2007 on windows I am not biting.

 

Get the iWork trial and see if you like it. I used it all this year for (high) school and it was great.

 

Yep!I'm downloading iWork08 from Apple.com now.......BTW I'm College Student, I need good word processing & presentation software for assignments.

 

I like iwork 08. exporting to .docs isnt hard at all. Its a very easy to use piece of software. I like it. I use it for many reports that i have done in school and it gets done what it needs to get done. My friend like MS office and he was very impressed with iwork. He liked the little tool tab next to the page layout. Try iWork 08. It would not hurt at all.

 

I'd go with Office. After years of using it, I just can't get used to any other application besides Word/Excel. But Keynote does look very nice.

 

office is the best overall package. if you dont use excel, chances are you dont even need anything but neo office. If you need spreadsheets, Office is the way to go.

I see no reason to buy iWork except to be "all apple". Thats great and all, but the only thing iWork does better than office is keynote, and even that isnt uber important.