MS Office 2007 (Via Crossover) vs MS Office 2008 for mac vs Open Office vs iWork 2009

Assume for a second that you need to frequently exchange documents with people using Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007, and that you need to use an Office Suite that has a great UI, so that you can make great, professional looking Word documents in particular with ease.

Which office suite is the best, or if you selected "other", please say what office suite you are referring to.

I have ordered a Macbook Pro, but am totally stumped as to what I should do for an Office suite. If it helps, I can use Office 2007 like a pro and I love it!

Cheers

 

I've used Office 08 for Mac and, in some ways, it replicates the ribbon interface. In others, though it does it's own thing. For example, by default, it turns on a formatting palette that displays all of the formatting controls in a small window off to the side. Usually one of the first things I do is turn on the Standard and Formatting toolbars and turn off the formatting palette, other folks like it though.

For an example of what I'm referring to, look at this image of the main Office for Mac programs: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/Office_2008.png

Keep in mind that some Office programs like Access aren't available in the Mac version, so you might need to use something else in addition to Office 08.

I've also used NeoOffice and it works fairly well. Haven't fooled around with it much though.

Also, You didn't create a poll

 

Ooh thanks for the info! So you can definately turn off the (i agree) irritating "Formatting Pallette" and integrate it into the toolbar like in Office 2007?

 

While it's true that Office 2008 doesn't have all the individual software that comes with 2007 (e.g. OneNote, etc.), the other office suites listed in the poll don't have equivalent counterparts either really.

Unless you absolutely need to use some of the legacy Excel scripts that Microsoft in its infinite wisdom decided to stop supporting, you might as well go with Office 2008.

There are some other compatibility issues between the Mac and Windows versions of Office generally (e.g. Powerpoint files, etc.), but for the most part, going with 2008 is the best choice.

Using Office 2007 in OSX, whether it's via Parallels, Fusion, Crossover, or whatever, is just too clumsy and inefficient to be a viable option for production work imo.

NeoOffice/Openoffice is just ugly and cumbersome, unless something's changed in the last 3 months that I don't know about.

I've never tried iWork 2009. The previous versions were beautiful in their simplicity, but they don't have full compatibility with Office documents, unless all you're working with are fairly generic, basic documents in Word (and even then, complex formatting is messed up). Don't even bother trying to use Excel documents of any decent size in Numbers. If MS Office wasn't the industry default in just about every single industry, I'd switch to iWork in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, Office is the standard right now, so this isn't really an option either.

 

i use iwork 09 and export to pdf for files that i am creating by myself and from scratch.

i use office 2007 for compatibility with other people's documents, because that is what they are using.

but crossover doesn't even work with office 2007, so that is pretty much a moot point. use office 2007 with vmware fusion if you want to go that route.

 

I used iWork '09 to create all documents used in our ISO 9000 inspection. Almost an entire three ring binder of spreadsheets. It's easy to use and quick as hell compared to Office '08. Much more beautiful than Office and OpenOffice. Simple clean interface like Bean word processor.

 

Office 2007 does in fact work with Crossover; that's what I do just to look at OneNote files every once in a while. However, it's only Bronze status, so it will install and run, but it doesn't work perfectly. At lot of options don't work, Macros don't work all the time, and the fonts and formatting are often messed up. Your best bet is probably Office 2007 in Windows for 100% compatibility, but if you're just writing papers and stuff, OpenOffice will probably be fine.

 

So, office 2007 does work under crossover...
I plan to use iwork most of the time, but word 2007 once in a while. How well do you think that'll work?

 

It'll work great! iWork is great, with a simple UI and all the features also. It's nice and fluid, and is snappy. Great choice!

 

Google Docs is more than enough for me (and for now)

The best thing about it is that you can access/edit/create documents from everywhere.

 

I use iWork 09 and it's great although I did have an issue recently with a complex word 2003 document that just didn't look right and I couldn't fix in iWork.

Office 2008 isn't that bad (I know I've complained about it) especially after the 12.1.5 update. But I still prefer to use iWork because I find it simpler, more intuitive and snappy compared to Office.

 

i guess it depends on your definition of "work".

to me, "partly working" == "not working".

however, i second the fact that it will install and run, but again, this does not constitute "working" to me. messed up fonts and formatting is pretty crucial, even for basic usage. if it were just macros that were messed up, i might have a different opinion, but we are talking about absent core functionality here. its a word processor, it needs to be able to display fonts and formatting correctly to be considered "working". come on.

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also note that you won't have any such problems running office 2007 in windows a virtual machine (using parallels or vmware fusion) or running the app directly booted into windows (boot camp).

 

Is Neo Office something to consider ??

 

That pretty much falls under "Open Office" really.

 

ah I didn't know it was the same thing sorry.

 

It's similar but not the same thing. Many people use it, though I don't see why OpenOffice is so bad....