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pmazer
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Join Date: May 2005
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2005-09-28, 10:36

I'm torn between which Office Suite to use: iWork or Microsoft Office. I like Keynote a lot more than Powerpoint, but I think I'm going to need Excel for some future classes. My friend and I are both students, and we're thinking about splitting the cost of Microsoft Office since it includes 3 license keys, so the cost would end up being the same. This is legal, right? Should I just get Microsoft Office and be done with it?
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BlueRabbit
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2005-09-28, 11:15

I wouldn't be so sure; iWork (especially Keynote) is really really awesome. I'd recommend getting both –*you can get Office for $99 now at the Apple Store (I think), and iWork should be around $50-$80. IMO, Keynote alone is worth that fifty dollars.
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alcimedes
I shot the sherrif.
 
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2005-09-28, 11:30

I would go with Office. It's the standard and it's what everyone is going to be working in. If you don't mind fiddling around with the quirks of moving files back and forth between Office and iWork formats fine, but I don't see any way to justify getting iWork if you're going to need a spreadsheet app.

Google is your frenemy.
Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty
I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me
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Franz Josef
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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2005-09-28, 12:03

In my experience Keynote and Pages are much better than Powerpoint and Word and it's very straightforward to export files from them in M$ format. They're a breath of fresh air. I initially bought Office (having used it professionally) and having subsequently bought iWork I wouldn't dream of starting a document in Word - it's such an unpleasant experience by comparison. As alc says, your decision really hinges on whether you need Excel or not.

If you can indeed get Office fo $99 get both, otherwise in your position I would get iWork now and wait and see if you need Excel.
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
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2005-09-28, 12:12

Pages is better. Period.

Keynote is better. Period.

However, if you need spreadsheet functionality, you need Office. Once iWork contains a spreadsheet application (Cells?) Office is gonna get boosted from my machine. Period.

Edit: I would hold off on iWork until MWSF '06. It is likely to get an update at that time and may gain spreadsheet functionality. It's close enough that you don't want to disappoint yourself. Get Office now and iWork in January after the Expo.

- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)

Last edited by kscherer : 2005-09-28 at 12:14. Reason: P. S.
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Kickaha
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2005-09-28, 13:50

Well, there's always something like OpenOffice to get you through the need of a spreadsheet for now...

After years of using it, I avoid Word like the plague now. I haven't fired it up in, um... two years? Three? And once Keynote came out, I ditched PowerPoint and haven't looked back.
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switchr92
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2005-09-28, 21:23

While I agree with the other posters that keynote is better than powerpoint (if only a little in my opinion), word is ten times better than pages. I use to use office on an older comp. of mine, then when i got this awesome iBook G4 (1.33GHz 12"), I decided to go the iWork route, due to good reviews/tight budget. I have yet to use keynote (though I will have to later this school year), yet I have used pages 20 times and it can't compare with word. I mis the ability to quickly see a word's synonyms, you have to press the space bar ten times at the beginning of each paragraph because tab does nothing, and lots of little things that make typing a paper three time more tedious than it should be. I recently ordered microsoft office 2004 student and teacher edition, and though I might end up using word only (already got keynote, though I would use powerpoint w/o hesitation if I had to for any reason, no need for excel, and I like the mail/address book instead of entourage (also no need for iCal)), it will be worth it. And the 3 licenses make it an even better buy.
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faramirtook
A for effort.
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: New Jersey
 
2005-09-29, 16:04

Quote:
Originally Posted by switchr92
While I agree with the other posters that keynote is better than powerpoint (if only a little in my opinion), word is ten times better than pages. ...snip... yet I have used pages 20 times and it can't compare with word. I mis the ability to quickly see a word's synonyms, you have to press the space bar ten times at the beginning of each paragraph because tab does nothing, and lots of little things that make typing a paper three time more tedious than it should be. I recently ordered microsoft office 2004 student and teacher edition, and though I might end up using word only ...snip...
I find that Word is the most difficult to use and bloated piece of crap, once I realized Pages' power. I, too, thought that Pages was crap, but then I played with it for an hour and a realized how great it is.
Pages is so easy to use, it seems difficult. It is totally different that word. Just play with it and the Inspector panel. Make sure you turn Layout on in the View menu. Just mess with it for an hour or so. All word processors are buggy and take learning.

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think
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switchr92
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2005-09-30, 00:43

faramirtook, I'm telling you, word is better. I just installed office 2004 today on my laptop, and i played around with word, pages, powerpoint, and keynote. The test presentation in keynote was far superior than in powerpoint, so much so that I just removed it from my dock completely, yet I also removed pages. It is so much harder to use than word, hands down. Perhaps it is because I have only used word in the past and it's what I'm used to, but I never plan on writing a paper in pages now that I have word any more than I plan to use powerpoint while I have keynote. It sucks, but I would shell out the $200. pmazer, you say you might need excel in the future. Definetely buy office. between word and excel, which I left in my dock because it makes killer charts (useful for science fair and the like), it's worth the money. those are the only to I would use, and they justify $150 for one license, IMO 3 llicenses is a steal. Oh, and if you can afford it, keynote is worth the $50 alone, just delete pages after it installs.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2005-09-30, 01:46

Gotta throw another hat in the Pages ring here... it took me a bit (a day or so) to get the feel of it, but most of that was having to learn to *NOT* try and beat it into submission and out-think it at every turn like you have to do with Word. Like faramirtook says, it's a totally different beast. I use it exclusively for visual layout now - it's superb in that arena. For technical writing and formatting I use LaTeX, but that's yet a whole other animal.

Pages has some warts, but it's not the 300lb autistic mongoloid that keeps crapping its diapers that Word is.
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staph
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2005-09-30, 05:04

Well, if we're going to have a discussion about word processors, I might as well throw my hat into the ring (again) and mention Mellel, which is a particularly good word processor for languages scholars or people who write in interesting scripts like Arabic or Hebrew.

Its major drawback is that it's very much a word processor — don't expect to do fancy layout in it. On the other hand, it does most of the stuff you'd otherwise want to do, with minimum fuss, and with some really excellent support for useful languages stuff, like multiple languages with differing scripts, and OpenType support which is only matched by InDesign.

Version 2 is well on its way… with some nice improvements. Unfortunately, the switch to an XML file format got postponed to 2.1. Oh well.

Oh — and it's very cheap!
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2005-09-30, 15:48

Quote:
Originally Posted by switchr92
. . . you have to press the space bar ten times at the beginning of each paragraph because tab does nothing . . .
You obviously haven't found the 'tabs' tab. The 'Help' menu is your friend!
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*Joe*
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2005-09-30, 16:05

personally, i would nudge towards MS Office. Primarily because you say you may need excel, secondly word just comes across as a much more competant word processor for every day usage, and has a lot of useful features I use as a student, e.g: Notebook documents. Also, office will of course have seamless file sharing and transfer with practically everyone you are likely to send / recieve documents to.

In terms of presentations, I prefer Keynote, but it must be said that the keynote export to powerpoint isn't completely seamless, I have found problems to arrise with picture formatting, and text formatting.

Overall if you could only pick one then I would go for office, it will cover you for every eventuality.
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Kyros
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Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2005-09-30, 17:18

Just don't make the mistake I did and assume "inspector" means "spell check." For a while I was wondering if I had wasted my money when I couldn't even figure out how to double space. Pages is far superior to Word.
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switchr92
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2005-09-30, 17:27

Quote:
Originally Posted by *Joe*
In terms of presentations, I prefer Keynote, but it must be said that the keynote export to powerpoint isn't completely seamless, I have found problems to arrise with picture formatting, and text formatting.
He is right that keynote export to powerpoint is far from seemless, and that could be a problem if you are getting a desktop. If you are getting a notebook, however, that isn't going to be a problem. You can just connect the notebook (powerbook preferably, due to spanning, but the iBook will work too) to the projector, and no powerpoint needed. If I were you, I would go notebook anyway, because from what I've heard, notebooks are way easier to use in college than desktops.
So, to review, if you are getting a notebook, than go for keynote, and if desktop, stick with powerpoint. Either way, go MS office.
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2005-10-03, 18:23

Quote:
Originally Posted by switchr92
. . . So, to review, if you are getting a notebook, than go for keynote, and if desktop, stick with powerpoint. Either way, go MS office.
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Koodari
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Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2005-10-04, 06:13

Why are you determined to buy software right now if you don't really need it yet? Don't buy either!

For word processing there are Abiword, NeoOffice, even TextEdit. Use whatever gets the job done. Personally, for my short university papers I have used Vim for actual writing till the text was done, then copy-pasted in Windows' Wordpad, and tweaked fonts for half a minute before printing. I never even saved the intermediate .doc, only the .txt.
(This is assuming you belong to the 99% of students who only need to write down the content and get a tidy document, instead of the 1% that is required to spend additional time to produce a shining example of graphic design. If your field of study is advertising or the like, by all means go buy Pages. If not, you probably won't need Word or Pages.)

By the time you need other software, you'll be in a better position to choose.

I like Keynote too. If I had to give presentations, that's what I'd use.
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staph
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2005-10-04, 06:23

Quote:
Originally Posted by Koodari
Why are you determined to buy software right now if you don't really need it yet? Don't buy either!

For word processing there are Abiword, NeoOffice, even TextEdit. Use whatever gets the job done. Personally, for my short university papers I have used Vim for actual writing till the text was done, then copy-pasted in Windows' Wordpad, and tweaked fonts for half a minute before printing. I never even saved the intermediate .doc, only the .txt.
(This is assuming you belong to the 99% of students who only need to write down the content and get a tidy document, instead of the 1% that is required to spend additional time to produce a shining example of graphic design. If your field of study is advertising or the like, by all means go buy Pages. If not, you probably won't need Word or Pages.)
Not a humanities scholar, are you? Footnotes are required by a number of humanities citation methods. For that matter, not having a header with your name and the page number is often frowned upon… and in law, a per-page word count in the footer.

Not that I want to detract from your vim coolness. I suppose the hardcore but workable option would be tex.
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losslesshead
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2005-10-04, 08:22

For me, I pretty much have to use M$ Office, mostly because of my middle school, where everything is microsoft. But to shorten things, I use Word and Excel for basic documents and spreadsheets, but pages and keynote for anything that needs a good layout and for presentations.

Hmmm... Mac Mini? Maybe. Mac Pro? Probably Not. iMac? Who knows!?
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Kickaha
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2005-10-04, 08:34

Quote:
Originally Posted by staph
Not that I want to detract from your vim coolness. I suppose the hardcore but workable option would be tex.
Woot! Let's hear it for LaTeX!

There are a few of us TeXHeads running around the boards if you want any help with that.

WYSIWYG is wonderful for layout-centric documents, (and for that I have Pages) but I can't IMAGINE trying to do my dissertation in anything other than TeXShop and BibDesk.

~400pgs (and growing!), 12 chapters, 8 appendices, >140 references, table of contents, index, lists of figures, tables, abbreviations, and equations, umpteen kazillion cross-references... and it handles it all for me transparently. I love it.
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staph
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2005-10-04, 08:47

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha
Woot! Let's hear it for LaTeX!

There are a few of us TeXHeads running around the boards if you want any help with that.
God, why did that statement just give me flashbacks to 80s dance musical movies (cue images of dozens of teenage geek females with high ponytails, pink leg warmers etc doing aerobic-like dancing to the tune of "Let's hear it for the TeXHeads")?

Maybe it's time for bed.
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Kickaha
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2005-10-04, 08:49

*clap*



*clap*


*clap*

*clap*
*clap*
*clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap*
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staph
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2005-10-04, 08:58

Thank you, thank you.
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johnner1999
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2005-10-04, 15:27

Go with iWork much nicer - but you don't need me telling you that huh :-)

i was just given an eval copy of this application, so far its pretty good and plays well with excel files

http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=14

I'm not a heavy spreadsheet guy though...?
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Koodari
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2005-10-04, 15:36

Quote:
Originally Posted by staph
Not a humanities scholar, are you? Footnotes are required by a number of humanities citation methods. For that matter, not having a header with your name and the page number is often frowned upon… and in law, a per-page word count in the footer.

Not that I want to detract from your vim coolness. I suppose the hardcore but workable option would be tex.
Note that vim wasn't what I suggested for him. Just an example of a minimalist approach that results in a relatively nice-to-read paper as opposed to "lpr -Ptheprinter mypaper.txt". We do our bigger projects in LaTeX but that was so much off subject I didn't want to mention it.

Are there no footnotes and word count in Abiword and NeoOffice, or are they a pain to use?

The main gist was that no matter what your needs, it's not a good idea to buy software for the future, but instead wait till the future is here and then buy software.
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staph
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2005-10-04, 22:58

Quote:
Originally Posted by Koodari
Note that vim wasn't what I suggested for him. Just an example of a minimalist approach that results in a relatively nice-to-read paper as opposed to "lpr -Ptheprinter mypaper.txt". We do our bigger projects in LaTeX but that was so much off subject I didn't want to mention it.
Ah. I didn't realise that it was in effect a reductio ad absurdum.

Quote:
Are there no footnotes and word count in Abiword and NeoOffice, or are they a pain to use?
Only as much of a pain as in Word.

Quote:
The main gist was that no matter what your needs, it's not a good idea to buy software for the future, but instead wait till the future is here and then buy software.
Yes, but most people need the safety blanket of knowing that when somebody actually sends them a complicated document for the first time in however many years, they'll actually be able to open it. Personally, I think the Word and RTF import/export of most Mac word processors is good enough to get around the compatibility issues. Others seem to be intent on using word processors for things they really shouldn't be used for, and not surprisingly come a cropper.

Personally, I think the vim+TeX option is admirable, and way cool. I was just a little offended by the assertion that only "PR majors" would require features greater than plain text.

Oh — and word count wasn't an issue in law, because they required manual word counts, per page.
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Koodari
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2005-10-05, 11:48

Quote:
Originally Posted by staph
Yes, but most people need the safety blanket of knowing that when somebody actually sends them a complicated document for the first time in however many years, they'll actually be able to open it.
...
Personally, I think the vim+TeX option is admirable, and way cool. I was just a little offended by the assertion that only "PR majors" would require features greater than plain text.
Given that the assertion was entirely your own invention, you should read more carefully before getting offended.

As for the safety blanket factor regarding attachments in mail, I would think my suggestions of NeoOffice, Abiword and TextEdit cover that. When I said there's no need to buy anything, it doesn't concern those three because they are free or come with the OS.
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staph
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2005-10-05, 19:11

Quote:
Originally Posted by Koodari
Given that the assertion was entirely your own invention, you should read more carefully before getting offended.
Quote:
…instead of the 1% that is required to spend additional time to produce a shining example of graphic design. If your field of study is advertising or the like…
I think a reasonable interpretation of the above was that basic text-editing was all that was needed except in advertising or allied fields (which would fit with the 1% figure). Which is clearly not the case. This is a silly argument tho'. You can have the last word if you like, but I'm not saying anything more on the subject.

Quote:
As for the safety blanket factor regarding attachments in mail, I would think my suggestions of NeoOffice, Abiword and TextEdit cover that. When I said there's no need to buy anything, it doesn't concern those three because they are free or come with the OS.
On a rational level, I completely agree. That doesn't mean that everybody is as informed and clear-thinking as you or me.
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