Should I get Microsoft Office for Mac or iWork '08 for Mac?

I really like iWork – it’s not as robust as Office but it can read/write office formats. It comes with amazing templates and the interface is nicer.

I am swaying towards iWork now.

Unless you regularly create and update large, complex spreadsheets, go with iWork. I find Numbers isn’t quite able to take Excel’s place yet (unfortunately), but Pages and Keynote are WAY better than Word and PP

Depends on whether or not your employer uses Windows…if you work for a large company or a company that uses Exchange, Outlook, etc., then it may be worth it to have MS Office 2008 Mac on your computer. Exchange seems to play nicely with Entourage (Outlook for Mac), and not-so-well with Apple Mail/Calendar (which is the default calendar/mail programs on Mac OS X, which requires IMAP). Going back and forth between your docs is relatively seamless with Office 2008 Mac. Another nice feature (albeit a small one) is with Word 2008 Mac, you can use “notebook” layout view, and record audio notes while you type; as you append bullet points and your outline, the audio notes are “chapterized” with the notes-awesome for meetings!

My experience has been (and I own both) that although Pages and Numbers can both open and save .doc and .xls (or in the case of the new versions .docx and .xla), in many cases, the docs don’t look exactly the same when you send them on to a Windows MS Office user. Although this may change with time and updates, as for now, it’s somewhat dicey proposition if you’re doing heavy file exchanging between Mac and PC users.

Like PnT mentions, iWork ‘08 is really quite impressive for the price, and Keynote ‘08 is the stuff-visually and functionally light years ahead of PowerPoint. If you’re only working on your own, iWork ‘08 is the way to go for individual work. Pages has a lot of cool templates for various kinds of docs and to me, seems a lot more intuitive and powerful for good looking design than Word. Lastly, you can very easily export documents in iWork to your website if you use iWeb.

Ok. That helps because I don’t USUALLY ever use excel on my PC or make spreadsheets at all.
@sndfreQ I am 13! Thirteen year olds don’t normally have employers!

Thirteen-year-olds do typically scream a lot, though.

@pupntaco Well they don’t have employers either now do they?

I too was an “expert” in a lot of areas at 13…not so much at 35, but that’s just me.

What’s that supposed to mean??? Did you even realize that I was thirteen??

We’ve all realized that.

Everyone except sndfreQ

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28285498@N05/2704209376/

There you go

I’m sure that oversight was caused by him being too busy moderating inappropriate questions to take the time to investigate every user’s age….

Get iWork, all the iWord apps are programmed in cocoa which makes them very stable and crazy fast. And keynote is alot more powerful than powerpoint. When you get used to pages, it’s as powerful as Adobe InDesign in my opinion. Go for iWork, it’s a no brainer.

@sndfreQ wow you can Copy and Paste. Good for you!!!!

Later…done helping you out this a.m. Have a good day.

iWork, Keynotes and Pages are great, numbers it pretty good too. And the price is WAY better than Office.

Now I don’t encourage piracy, but… yea… iWork is the sh*t.

you also might want to check openoffice (which now runs nativey on OS X). I prefer it to iWork and office (which it’s similar to), plus it’s open source and free.

I have used Open Office before and it’s ok but I don’t really like it.

I love the idea of open office, but the GUI is too horrible to look at! :P

sure, sndfrQ try’s to help out, but guess what, 13 year old experts are too immature for fluther…

Lucky that I’m 14. :P

Well that’s a good thing I am turning fourteen!!!

Yeah but at this very moment, you’re not.

and at this very moment, you’re being a very annoying force here on fluther, so just tone it down or beat it…

Well spoken.

iWork! It’s got more features, easier to use, and is fully compatible with Office documents.
Plus it’s cheaper too.
One thing I LOVE about Pages is how it is equivalently a combination of Word and Publisher, giving more flexibility.
Also the Keynote presentations always look much more professional compared to a Powerpoint.

iWork all the way!

something i just wondered, is the apple remote compatible with that powerpoint thingy ?

good question, i’ll try when i get home

@iwamoto
The remote can be used to control presentations in Apple Keynote (on both Intel Macs & PPC Macs), presentations in Microsoft Powerpoint 2008, picture slide shows in iPhoto, QuickTime, DVD Player, and audio in iTunes. iRed Lite can be used for controlling OpenOffice Impress presentations.
Source

don’t forget VLC player and frontrow (obviously) ;)
i knew about the rest, just not powerpoint, i’m telling you, that remote is awesome…

14!