iwork or microsoft office for mac?

As far as I know, Pages works pretty well to import-export .doc documents but it is not perfect. Some features may be dropped during the process.

For Numbers it's a bit different. I am able to import .xls files but when I export to .xls format, I never was able to open the resulting documents with the free clones of Office.

You wrote that you have to choose between iWork ans Office. You forgot the free OpenOffice and/or neoOffice.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 22 juin 2008 10:30:42)

I suggest you download the iWork '08 trial & give it a try for 30 days to see if it works for you.

iWork is pre-installed on all Macs and if, by chance, your computer doesn't have it you can download the demo from Apple's web site. The demo is the full version limited only by being usable for 30 days. You can buy a license online and serialize the demo version getting exactly what you'd get if you had the disc.

I work in academia and mostly use iWork. The documents that I pass on to my students and colleagues as well as the documents that I receive from my students and colleagues are almost always perfectly translated from Office by Pages. There have only been a few rare exceptions where a document I've received won't translate well. While I've been testing Pages since it was first released I've also been testing NeoOffice and the documents Pages cannot read NeoOffice has. NeoOffice is a freeware Office clone. In my testing I've also learned what to avoid so that my Pages documents will properly export to Office. Again, NeoOffice has been invaluable. I do have Office on my computer, though if I were required to pay for it I'd not have bothered. NeoOffice is good enough mostly.

So, could you get by with iWork? Yes. Should you? Since you are a student you are eligible for the Student/Home version of Office which runs about $130, not quite twice as much as iWork. If on the whole, your work will be done in Word for academic style papers, I think the answer is yes - just be sure to download either NeoOffice or OpenOffice so you can learn what not to do. If you'll also be doing presentations, you'll find that the compatibility between Keynote and PowerPoint is disappointing. Your Keynote presentations will export and PowerPoint presentations will load into Keynote. The problem is your Keynote presentations will lose something in the translation. If you'll be using Excel – buy Office.

Yes, iWork's Pages will import Word documents, BUT they don't look as good as they do in Word. Pages imports MOST of the attributes of a Word doc, but not all. When you import a Word doc, Pages pops up a warning telling you that not all attributes were able to be imported. If you want to see which ones were not, you can click a button and the list will appear.

The same thing happens when you import an Excel file into Numbers. If you're not picky about keeping the original formatting, especially if you intend to reformat the document anyway, maybe this won't matter to you. But I find it unacceptable, so I'm sticking with my copy of Office Mac 2004. That also avoids the iWork learning curve which, though small, is different from the Office programs.

The trial download is easy to find on Apple's Web site by searching for iWork. Once you're on the main iWork page you will see a link for it. Good luck and I hope this was helpful.