Shortly after the secretary of a group I belong to got Word 2007, Pages '09 on my Mac became the defacto gateway through which his files passed to make them readable on another member's Mac (with AppleWorks) and by a couple of PC owners who were still using earlier versions of MS Office. For the fairly simple files (meeting minutes) Pages '09 apparently worked quite well for this task. Several "Thank you"s, no complaints.
An iWork '09 30 day trial is available for download. It's the full version for 30 days. After the trial period it loses the ability to save or print unless a user licence is purchased and entered. 30 days should be enough for a fair trial of it's suitability to your purposes.
Regards,
Barry