pros/cons of using Microsoft Office vs. iWork

I bought my macbook and got iWork for only $50. The program is really great, especially for school and what not. It has so many choices. It's super, plus I did not want to buy something from Microsoft for my mac =p.

It really depends on what you need to do with it. If you need to do presentations through Powerpoint then that will be difficult. Pages will transfer seamlessly for almost everything and so will Numbers. The issue with Keynote to Powerpoint is because Keynote is to advanced to Powerpoint and doesn't match with its transitions. For instance if you wanted to do magic move or text transitions on Powerpoint, you can't because Powerpoint isn't as advanced so when you export from Keynote to PPT it will not transfer those transitions. So you have to keep the transitions very minimal. I personally love iWork and think it is better than Microsoft's stuff (cheaper and better). But if the school requires Powerpoint stuff to be done on THEIR computers then you might want to use Microsoft's crappy stuff.
Here are the links for both...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TQ744LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0OA&mco=MjE1MjQxOA
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB943Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0OA&mco=MzE3MTU2MA
Also if you order iWork with your macbook it is only 50 bucks, you can also always try the trial for 30 days and see how it works.

For straightforward school stuff you probably won't have any issues unless you absolutely have to submit projects in a certain way. Office has far more features than the average person needs.

Did you know you can get MS Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.99 if you are enrolled at a college with a .edu address?
http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx

If this is for professional use then Microsoft office:mac is the only real solution. I've just switched to Mac from windows use, and investigated compatibility quite carefully. iWork '08 handles .doc and .xls files in a way that makes them not display EXACTLY the same across both platforms, and lacks functionality particularly in spreadsheet handling and graphs. I have not tried iWork '09 as this was not available when I purchased in December.

If the machine is not for professional use then you should consider Open Office, as it has better compatibility than iWork, even though it is clunkier. I could almost use it, but compatibility is better (though still not perfect) with office:mac.

My personal experience is that I found it difficult to switch away from Office after years of using the Windows version in a corporate environment. I became used to the shortcuts, where things were, and the general look and feel, and iWork didn't feel right for me - I'm much more comfortable with Office...

I agree with above. I've messed around with the iWork stuff but after using Office for 8+ years it was just hard to move away from it. I got a Work at Home copy from my schools bookstore for $10 dollars (the condition being you're supposed to use it for "work related purposes" only and are required to remove it from your machine when you're finished at the university...riiiiight)

The iWork stuff works alright but I just couldn't move away from Office.

Speaking of Office and iWork, personally speaking I prefer using iWork as I am using Mac, however, in consideration of environment limit here in China, I have to combine both, just like Mac and Windows, I use Mac while I still need Windows. I mean Microsoft also has a lot of good stuff, I was so used of using the office. I am a quick learner, for iWork, I am learning, I believe it will be as easy as Office, may be better. Well, I love Mac.

Of course NeoOffice (the OS X port of OpenOffice from Sun) is a complete Microsoft Office compatible suite which has been around for years and has been updated with each new release of Microsoft Office in order to maintain compatibility. And the best part... it's completely free. It also "feels" more like MS Office on a PC if that's what you're used to:

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

It's actually pretty amazing that they offer this for free and so few people seem to use it.

I second JoeyR's opinion,

I have all office suites mentioned here, iWorks 09, MS Office for Mac 2008, NeoOffice and OpenOffice.

OpenOffice is complete, stable, and FREE... Is compatible with way more than iWorks and MS Office are (like, WordPerfect docs, anyone?), and is free...

It doesn't look as polished as iWorks or MS Office, but hey, it works better than MS Office, which crashes very often if you have a heavy document with tons of multimedia like various graphs, tables, pictures, etc.

Did I mention it's complete, stable, and free?

😉