Question about Iwork vs Microsoft Home/Student

Hey whats the deal with Iwork? Is it better or just as good as Microsoft Home/Student for Mac? I need to know which software is better for college.

 

Out of the two, i prefer iwork

heaps of good templates and its alot cheaper than microsoft.

Only downside is that if you want to view they iwork documents on windows you have to export the document each time

 

Microsoft Office for Mac definitely has more functionality, but the majority of users won't use it at all. If you're just looking for a word processor mainly with better features than just Notepad or TextEdit, definitely iWork is the next step up!

 

It's gonna be a personal thing for everyone.

Personally I prefer office over iwork. just seems to work better when you use it.

 

I second this reply

 

I third it.

 

If you are university student, I strongly suggest you get MS office. It has auto citation and many useful features. On the other hand, iwork is an ideal software to take notes or some simplistic work.

 

+1 to that, I am also a college student and agrees that you will find many functions in word 2008 to be useful like citation, reference, and equation

but on the other hand, keynote from iWork is a lot nicer than Powerpoint from MS Office

 

Also I really like the note taking template in office, makes it really easy to take notes, with bullets and such compared to pages.

Though I agree with chen, keynote is much better looking then powerpoint.

 

Office is more feature rich but bigger, slower, buggier. It has the best compatibility if you are collaborating on document with other Office users.

iWork is smaller, faster, and more reliable. Its better integrated with OS X but if you are used to Office it can be quite a transition (just a lot of stuff works differently). It can import/export Office files but not always perfectly.

 

I prefer Office, it's also nice because it's cross-platform. For college I'd go with Office.

 

Office is mandatory for me as an engineering student who uses excel, but i prefer the features of word over iwork's pages anyways. I have heard very good things about keynote however.

 

I actually prefer Office 2007. I hate Office 2008 on the Mac. It's a freaking mess and slow and don't get me started on Excel. iWork is nice to use due to the templates, but it's a bit limited. I like to create flyers and reports with iWork, but for work I use Office.

 

University's now have gone online. A lot of the stuff you have to download from your college website. Teachers upload their notes in powerpoint format for you to download if you want to. I have used iWork before but i never tried it to open a powerpoint document. I don't know if that would work.

 

It's all personal preferences but I second this. IMO, the order is Office 2007, iWork and then 2008 last.

When I'm on my PC I work on 2007 and on a mac it's iWork. I deeply regret buying Office 2008.

 

I would try demos for both, in addition to the free OpenOffice.org 3.0.

Personally I vastly prefer Microsoft Office, and would use OpenOffice before iWork, but for some people it might work great for them.

 

All of the iWork applications can import the equivalent MS Office files. The imports are usually very good but not perfect (usually fine unless you have to make changes and export back again). But iWork apps don't have all the features of Office so you'll find some things that are just lost and some things that don't translate well. Generally I've found OpenOffice does a better job of importing/exporting Office docs. But iWork is nicer to use and if PDFs are ok to submit, anyone can look at what you produce.

 

i prefer office, but if you plan on getting the mac version of office, i would go with office 2004 (it is on sale at my uni for 15 bucks ).. cause the *******s removed VB from office 2008, so if you need macros, solver and etc, you're f****

 

I quad it.

 

I love office 2008 for Mac... but then again I got it through a work discount for 35$ taxes in... At that price who wouldn't love it???!

 

I have both and i use excel more than numbers because im more familiar with it and powerpoint because it's default to open up lecture notes. I try and use pages whenever possible because i prefer the format.

 

Office for mac, contrary to what folks will tell you, is excellent (and a must when considering compatibility issues in the corporate world)!! I have used both iWork and office for mac, and decided on office for mac considering, 1) what iWork does to existing excel files created on a PC (destroys them), and 2) what people (PC users) were telling me on the other end as I sent out several test files I had created in numbers and pages (in other words, the files were not coming over as i created them).

All said, keynote is an excellent program over power point. But again, unless I am creating a sideshow for myself, and not planning on sharing with the PC world, I will have to go with PowerPoint!!

Like everyone is saying, it depends on what your usage is. Basic stuff for yourself -- then surely go with iWork. It's a great program. Creating and sharing with the PC world? Then office for mac wins by default.

 

For basic stuff though I think a lot of people could just skip iWork and get Openoffice, which IMO is much better anyway.

And if you're a student, you probably qualify for an $80 or so copy of MS Office anyway :-/