<p>Which do you prefer, iWork or Microsoft Office? I'm leaning toward Microsoft Office as I'll be a business major and think it'll be more versatile, but any suggestions would be helpful.</p>
<p>Office will get the nod for being the most used software, but I actually prefer iWork. It works pretty seamlessly inside of OSX and I feel it really gives a more simplified and much less cluttered view of your work. The full screen view in Pages '09 is really an ingenious feature, surprised nobody thought of it earlier since its so useful. Office tends to have a lot of unnecessary toolbars up at the top, though the ribbon has cleaned some of that up on the windows version at least. Not sure about Office 11 and if it has the ribbon on the Mac version, but its worth a look. Simple isn’t always better, but I’ve never really liked Office for Mac. Just really didn’t fit in in the whole mac scheme and eventually led me to trying iWork.
In a side note, lots of people still like to bring up formatting issues while converting a file from iwork to office. Personally, when working with text docs I’ve never had any issue. Haven’t done much with spreadsheets. The main issue would probably lay with the transition from Keynote to Powerpoint. Slide Transitions and themes not present in the Office application would obviously create an issue when trying to open or play the presentations so I would keep that in mind.</p>
<p>I agree with Big Cat - iWork is a great suite of programs that are much cleaner and easier to use than MS Office. Still, I use MS Office because so many of the people I work with expect Word and Excel files to be exchanged back and forth. In particular, if you are a business major, you will probably work with Excel files that contain macros. Office 2011 can handle most of those (but not Office 2008), but iWork’s Numbers can’t.</p>
<p>Libre Office, the continuation of Open Office. It’s free, gets patches faster, and is free. It’s open source, if you’re into that, and integrates pretty well with Mac
Otherwise, I’d say go with Microsoft Office, if only for convenience and familiarity.</p>
<p>Most colleges have access to Microsoft software at greatly reduced rates. The cost of Microsoft Office should be very reasonable. While the Microsoft Office package is not necessary the best software from a design standpoint, it is the most used software and Microsoft Word and Excel are standards in the business world. I used Wordperfect for years because it was better word processing software for generating documents but it just isn’t worth using anymore.</p>
<p>Comparisons: Office vs iWork</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Excel vs. Numbers
I’d go with Excel on this one. Very versatile, takes a little getting used to, but a VERY VERY good program. Includes visual basic for programming and such. This, in my book, is superior to Numbers for an engineering student/science major/statistics/econ, etc. Numbers has better formatting/editing options for presentation (as a lot of mac programs do).</p></li>
<li><p>Word vs Pages
Identical</p></li>
<li><p>Powerpoint vs Keynote
I hear Keynote is better, makes more vibrant presentations, and is slightly easier to use than Powerpoint. But I have used Powerpoint always, merely because I’m used to it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Essentially, choose the one that best fits your needs. I hope my suggestions were helpful.</p>
<p>Office also comes with Entourage, Outlook, etc. while iWork doesn’t. Not that I find much use for those programs, but you might like to look into them.</p>
<p>My school computers have a filter thing where it can only open Microsoft related files. It can’t open “document” files from Open Office, Libre Office, or iWork. O_O
I almost got a zero on my english paper because I couldn’t open my paper on the school computer. I had to rush and find my friend with his laptop.</p>
<p>So, normally there should be no compatibility issues. But you never know…</p>
<p>Thank you all for your help. I’d be more inclined to try iWork but the fact that Office is so widely used is exactly why I’ll probably go with that. My school also offers a pretty decent discount which brings it closer to the price of iWork so that’s not an issue. I’ve never used anything other than Word, PowerPoint, and Excel and that probably won’t change. And since you can download individual iWork programs from the Mac App Store now I think I’ll just download Keynote separately since it seems to be the one upper hand on Office.</p>
<p>I have both (which is completely redundant), but I prefer iWork.</p>
<p>Though, I use Microsoft for many school assignments when I know my professors use PCs and I don’t want any hiccups.</p>
<p>Microsoft Office.</p>
<p>Office is Office. I used to use iWork until I realize that there are ways of getting Microsoft Office without emptying my pockets (Btw I am not condoning piracy at all). I used to get so annoyed at having to convert my iWorks file to .Doc to share with my friends and teachers… and heaven forbid if we are collaborating over a filesharing network, UGGGGH. (I use Google Docs now, but still, it was a pain).</p>
<p>While iWorks is a better looking suite, Microsoft Office 2011 is no joke either. The UI is close to or just as nice as iWorks. But the fact that there is no wall between Windows MSOffice and the Mac MSOffice is a deal maker.</p>
<p>
Those four extra clicks really got to you, huh? :P</p>
<p>As someone who uses a PC desktop with Office and MacBook Pro with iWork, I prefer iWork because of the UI. Pages is much less cluttered and simply laid out, but I am not very well acquainted with the Office 2011 interface so I’m not providing an objective viewpoint.</p>
<p>If you plan on being a business major, I would go with Office. As you said, you can always download the individual program(s) you want.</p>
<p>A neat feature on Macs now is the ability to download only the applications that you need from the productivity suite. So lets say I did alot of writing, all i would have to do is head over to the mac app store and buy pages '09 for $10 instead of the whole suite for $41 on a single DVD. You can obviously buy the whole 3 app suite for $30, but its sometimes nice to have that backup disk if things go awry. I’m not sure if you can do that with Office '11, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its already in the app store. I’d check it out. Can save you a ton of cash even if word or excel is 30 a pop.</p>
<p>Those four extra clicks aren’t much, but they add up over time and it raises the question “why bother having to do those four clicks when I can get the same program that does the same without the four clicks?”</p>
<p>But I do think Pages has a much better UI. +1 to Apple. And it is MUCH cheaper (but then again anything can be had for as little as four clicks these days and 0$).</p>
<p>Entourage and outlook are replaced by addressbook and mail in osx. Pages and word are sufferer and I find pages is more versAtile. </p>
<p>I would recommend having both softwaree as iWork is cheap to begin with and has a student discount. Office should have a student discount/pirate it. </p>
<p>For incompatibilities you could just use print the file to PDF from the export/print menus and then it’s standardized;)
I will not recommend numbers however, it’s a joke.</p>
<p>I have iWork and am a satisfied customer. For your purposes, however, I would recommend Office '11.</p>