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damiensmunki · Jan 17, 2008, 10:04 PM

Okay, guys... I can't believe this thread doesn't already exist, or if it does, search isn't retrieving it. What do you think? For people who long to completely rid their lives of Microsoft, will iWork suffice, or do you guys think Office is still a necessity? How do the two compare?

peeb · Jan 17, 2008, 10:17 PM

Office for those who need:

1. 100% compatibility with the rest of the world,
2. Extremely complex spreadsheets.

iWork for the rest.

lpkmckenna · Jan 18, 2008, 01:51 AM

After a Leopard install crapped in my hard drive, I decided to reduce the amount of clutter in my applications folder. I didn't bother to install MS Office or NeoOffice. So far, iWork has been great.

Sage · Jan 18, 2008, 02:12 AM

Originally Posted by peeb

Office for those who need:

1. 100% compatibility with the rest of the world,
2. Extremely complex spreadsheets.

iWork for the rest.

Agreed, except “100% compatibility” is a bit optimistic.

I’m actually installing Vista and Office 2007 soon because my work requires macros and complex, hack-ish charts (which don’t work in Office for Mac).

philm · Jan 18, 2008, 05:20 AM

Originally Posted by peeb

Office for those who need:

1. 100% compatibility with the rest of the world,
2. Extremely complex spreadsheets.

iWork for the rest.

The ability to auto-number figures and tables, the need to use a spreadsheet beyond a record of household bills, and the daily use of simple long-ago-written macros to do anything from formatting tables in Word and charts in Excel, regrettably, keep me with Office 2004.

Colonel Panic · Jan 18, 2008, 11:25 AM

I can see using Pages in lieu of Word for a wide variety of tasks, but the idea that you'd only go with Excel over Numbers if you needed 100% compatibility is off base to me. There is still a real gap between Excel and Numbers. Excel is also a lot faster than Numbers (which isn't saying much because Excel is disappointingly slow in Office 08, and much slower than its Windows counterpart - Numbers is brutally slow).

I'm very interested to know what the gaps are when iWork has gone through one or two revisions in the next two years, so we have Pages 5, Numbers 3 and Keynote 5 or 6, and can compare that to Office 2008, sp1, since the rate of improvement for iWork has been great with each release.

Entourage is pretty nice in Office 08 and syncs with address book and iCal (i dont remember if office 2004 did this) but the huge email database file is risky and not time machine friendly, making me cautious.

Word 2008 seems pretty good to me so far - it seems to have gotten the lion's share of the MacBU's energy this cycle.

cgc · Jan 18, 2008, 11:54 AM

I don't like either (though I will probably need Office 2008 for college compatibility). I use Nisus Writer Pro which is fast, simple, and stable.

JKT · Jan 18, 2008, 04:59 PM

Originally Posted by peeb

Office for those who need:

1. 100% compatibility with the rest of the world,
2. Extremely complex spreadsheets.

iWork for the rest.

As already mentioned, you can't get 100% compatibility with Office 2008. Alas, it is Windows and Office 2007 or nothing now. Which, imo, is precisely what MS wants you to do instead of getting 2008.

Cadaver · Jan 19, 2008, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by JKT

As already mentioned, you can't get 100% compatibility with Office 2008. Alas, it is Windows and Office 2007 or nothing now. Which, imo, is precisely what MS wants you to do instead of getting 2008.

True, but 99% compatibility is pretty good. Shame on Microsoft for not making it 100%, but I suspect the Mac programmers at Microsoft were mostly left to themselves to develop the compatibility with little input or help from the rest of Microsoft. Steve Balmer I'm sure couldn't care less.

MacosNerd · Jan 19, 2008, 01:47 PM

I have iwork, and I'm still not really liking numbers. I'm just too used to how excel works. I haven't purchased office 2008 yet, but I'm leaning towards that.

JKT · Jan 19, 2008, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by Cadaver

True, but 99% compatibility is pretty good. Shame on Microsoft for not making it 100%, but I suspect the Mac programmers at Microsoft were mostly left to themselves to develop the compatibility with little input or help from the rest of Microsoft. Steve Balmer I'm sure couldn't care less.

Sorry, but it isn't even remotely close to 99% compatible if you use Excel and Macros at all. Even OpenOffice.org's Calc is now more compatible (and it isn't particularly highly compatible) than Excel 2008. It might be 99% compatible if you only use Word and creaTextEdit basic spreadsheets, perhaps, but it is woefully incompatible if you happen to do anything more complex with Excel.

Cadaver · Jan 20, 2008, 02:32 AM

Originally Posted by JKT

Sorry, but it isn't even remotely close to 99% compatible if you use Excel and Macros at all. Even OpenOffice.org's Calc is now more compatible (and it isn't particularly highly compatible) than Excel 2008. It might be 99% compatible if you only use Word and creaTextEdit basic spreadsheets, perhaps, but it is woefully incompatible if you happen to do anything more complex with Excel.

True. I wasn't referring to macros and Visual Basic stuff though, but to the comment regarding complex formatting of text documents. But I agree - Microsoft nuked the whole macro development system for reliance on AppleScript and Automator, regardless of the fact they left it intact for the PC version - and broke a lot of stuff by doing so.

Dawson · Jan 20, 2008, 09:46 AM

I really hate Office 2008. Pages is good, but its lack of bibliography support means I will be using Word 2007 under VMware for all of my formal writing.

cgc · Jan 20, 2008, 12:27 PM

The more I use Office 2008 the more I like it. I can consistently crash Excel, however, if I uncheck "background error checking" on a certain file. Still using Nisus Writer Pro, but now I won't have to go to VMWare Fusion to use Office 2007 which is worse than Office 2008. BTW, military employees can buy MS office for $20 + shipping via the Home Use program...

infowarrior · Jan 20, 2008, 01:31 PM

The only thing I don't like about Word is that it seems the GUI has far too much extraneous stuff that clutters the screen up top -- ie, between the formatting bars and the top of the document window.....all those tabs and galleries that you can only turn (I think) some of them off.

I do like Entourage 2008 and since that and Word are my primary Office apps, will make the switch when I move to Leopard later next month on my PBG4.

timmerk · Jan 20, 2008, 07:32 PM

I just uninstalled Office 2008. Word and Excel crashed too many times and the long app boot times were just not worth it. On a warm start of Word, it took 33 seconds on a MB Core 2 Duo w/ 2 GB RAM. What the hell?

peeb · Jan 20, 2008, 10:02 PM

So what are you switching to?

timmerk · Jan 20, 2008, 10:05 PM

iWork (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote). Except when I need to use the Export as PDF option, in which case I will use Pages to export to docx, then use Word 2007 (windows) to save the pdf. I need the option when saving pdfs to create bookmarks based on the style headings, which Pages still does not have!

PhotoBug · Jan 20, 2008, 10:30 PM

Wow... looks like both need to step it up.
Office is to cluttered for me. (scares me)
Pages I like
Keynote I Love
Never used Numbers.

Colonel Panic · Jan 20, 2008, 10:37 PM

Originally Posted by timmerk

I just uninstalled Office 2008. Word and Excel crashed too many times and the long app boot times were just not worth it. On a warm start of Word, it took 33 seconds on a MB Core 2 Duo w/ 2 GB RAM. What the hell?

That seems really weird. Are all your fonts OK? Did you trash normal.dot? Similar specs for me and it is maybe 4-5 seconds. not fast, but not 33 seconds...

cgc · Jan 29, 2008, 10:00 PM

I've found that both Office 2008 and iWork '08 are slow on my MacPro (with 3GB memory). Weird...

Don Pickett · Jan 29, 2008, 11:56 PM

I may have to get it if I start getting 2008 files, but all my work is now NeoOffice.

alex_kac · Jan 30, 2008, 12:12 AM

The ONLY thing I use Office for is Subtotals in Excel when I get royalty reports in CSV format and to edit Word Legal documents simply because I don't want to risk some minor format issue with those.

If I could get Numbers to do Subtotals in one command like Excel - then voila I have no need for 90% of the time I use Office which is about 2-3 times a month now since iWork hit.