office 2011 and iWork 09 on the same machine

Hey guys,

I was thinking of installing both iWork and office on my macbook pro which is running OS X lion and I have a few questions and hope someone can shed some light on these.

1) If i install both of them in the same machine, are there any chances of system errors/clashes/conflicts (like when opening a specific text document and choosing which software to open it with by default)?

2) iwork has not been updated to 2011, so am i supposed to wait for the next version or can I use 09? when do you suppose the next version will be released?

3) is iwork 09 fully functional in OS X Lion? esp. considering the autosave and versions features?

My intention for installing both is mainly that I need an office suit kind of software to do some reports at Uni and according to macrumors office 2011 won't be supporting all the features of os x lion for another couple of months. So am wondering whether to just install and keep office 2011 for the time being and use iWork (pages) primarily for my work

CHeers.

 

I've always used both on Snow Leopard and now in Lion. As much as I am no fan of Microsoft they've been really quick with updates and Office works amazing with Lion. I use iWork's Pages to do my brochure design work for my business and there's nothing better than Keynote. I have MS Office for various compatibility needs.

iWork has been updated for Lions's new features but I'm sure there will be a whole new version to go with iCloud soon.

 

They won't conflict as the default filetypes for them are different.

 

I keep hearing favourable opinions of Keynote. How does it compare to Powerpoint? What are its pros/cons?

 

Keynote gives you more options that pretty much allow you to fully customize any presentation you want. It even lets you pick which resolution you want the presentation to be in. I think PowerPoint is easier to use but Keynote is a better experience once you get the hang of things. I like using Keynote for all my presentations simply because I work and go to school in a Windows world with everyone using PowerPoint. My presentations always stand out as being different as I can be in a class, sit through 6 presentations, and 3 of them will have the same slide themes.

 

Cheers guys, thanks.

 

Keynote slideshows look nicer almost by default, so it's harder to make something that has that stereotypical ghastly PowerPoint look. You're still making slides though and Keynote won't save you if you insist on plastering a ton of bullets on each slide.

Keynote's biggest drawback is compatibility (or rather the lack of it). If you are making something with special fonts and transitions, you shouldn't expect to be able to share the slides with PowerPoint users. It has export options, of course, but things will move or behave slightly differently.

 

On the flip side, Keynote has better compatibility if one has an iPhone (at least an iPhone 3Gs) or an iPad since everything will transition over to that quite nicely. You are right though in that sharing Keynote presentations with PowerPoint users isn't all that great. That is why I just export any Keynote presentation I make as a PDF file. Any animation or transition effect is lost (though professional presentations shouldn't have those anyway) but a non-animated PDF made by Keynote still looks better than anything PowerPoint can spit out (mainly because everyone and their mother uses PowerPoint, there was a time when I had an advantage using PowerPoint 2010 but that was lost).