iWork vs. Office

If you search the discussion boards here with the keyword "office", you'll likely run across the many threads where this issue has been hashed out.

My own take is that if you do not need to share editable documents with other people (i.e., if you are only going to produce hardcopies or PDFs of papers), and you don't need advanced editing capabilities (such as track changes), then Pages is a much easier to use word processing application than Word, and is a vastly better page layout tool as well.

Do keep in mind that there are many other inexpensive word processors for the Mac, each with their own strengths, including Nisus Writer, Mariner Write, Mellel, and others. Also, the free open-source Office-compatible suites NeoOffice and OpenOffice provide almost identical functionality to Word, and are available without charge if you ever find the need to exchange Word documents with someone.

Personally I really like Keynote but I don't like Pages, depending on the kind of papers your supposed to write I would look at Nisus or Mellel. Nisus uses RTF as it's native file format.

A possible alternative if you need to exchange .doc documents are NeoOffice, OpenOffice or Word.

Of course there is a completely different alternative: LaTeX, it's different but this is what I use for 80% of the stuff I write.

If you ever EVER need to share these docs with Office users OR take a doc and update it on a computer not your own, then you'd probably do best just to get the official Microsoft Office.

As far as price, if you're a student, you can get the student version for a little over a hundred bucks depending on where you buy, what rebates you get.

Laurie,
While you are waiting for the new version of Word take a look at Mellel and Bookends. They have trial versions. The package works very well together for papers with references (most academic papers) in my opinion both better and cheaper than EndNote.

If you have to exchange with PC users Neo Office J (free, open source) works just fine it just has a klutsy interface.

I have used Word for years and hate it. it has crashed, lost data, and been generally hard to format. Pages if you get used to it is elegant. And there is always the Google on line office suite if you have high speed internet.

I use Pages and OpenOffice (X11). In addition, I use Word on Windows in my daytime job.

Advice Number 1: Do not waste money on Word. It is not even close to desktop publishing software. The only time one needs to have Word is to ensure 100% compatability (in 90+ % of situations is "no").

I use Pages for page layout stuff I create from scratch. (I use OmniOutliner to create the text for the page layout stuff). I find it very good at making pretty documents (Indesign and like packages are beyond my desired capabilities).

I use OpenOffice (which does not cost anything to acquire) for quick compatability with Microsoft Office (e.g., when I am out in the field with my Mac for my day job--this employer is Microsoft Office-based).

I use FileMaker for what many people use spreadsheets for (data management and storage). I use Pages for table summaries and charting, which works well. Once in awhile I have to pull out OpenOffice Calc for some modeling, since iWork does not have this capability.

Almost all my deliverable documents are PDF, so is almost no issue when it comes to compatability with others. My collaboration with others is mostly text-based (which is very easily handled with OpenOffice with "save as .doc" and OmniOutliner with "save as .rtf").

Bottom line, try OpenOffice first, because it does not cost anything. If you want better desktop publishing capabilities, then try iWork.

I would second the suggestion of the Mellel and Bookends combination. I'm a university lecturer and have battled with the bloated, slow and unstable Microsoft Word for years and have been won over by Mellel with its stable and fast performance, ease of use (and ease of customisation), friendly and fast support and cheap price. As a student you can get both Mellel and Bookends for something like $89 USD – a snip compared with Word.

Dr H.