Travel Technology - iWork v. Office

I use Office for Mac on my Macbook. It seems to do fine except for very occasional compatibility problems.

Apple is now pushing iWork and claims documents produced on iWork are easily compatible and can be read by Windows machines (and vice versa).

Does anyone have any actual experience using iWork and exchanging documents with Windows users? I generally prefer Apple products and would like to use iWork if possible.

Any info would be appreciated.

I use Office for Mac on my Macbook. It seems to do fine except for very occasional compatibility problems.

Apple is now pushing iWork and claims documents produced on iWork are easily compatible and can be read by Windows machines (and vice versa).

Does anyone have any actual experience using iWork and exchanging documents with Windows users? I generally prefer Apple products and would like to use iWork if possible.

Any info would be appreciated.

Well, I have used iWork since the beginning. I like it. Keynote is much nicer than alternatives that I've tried (maybe not as many features, but I spend less time making better presentations, which is a win...), pages I use occasionally.

I have experience exchainging documents with Windows-users, and it usually works fine. But, I am not in a particularly "windows-heavy" business, and it's not particularly often that I need to access stuff touched by Windows users.

I have the "old" version, not the '08 version, which I am still waiting for purchasing to deliver.

I messed around with 08 at the Apple Store yesterday. As you would expect, it does everything you need and in a far more elegant and simple way than Office... Of course this expert opinion is based on my 5 minutes playing with the product so take it with a grain of salt. :D

I have both iWork and Office for Mac, though i prefer using iWork as i just find it more productive. I head up our Mac team, the rest of the business is MS Windoze. All files created with iWork can be saved as Win formats and opened with Win Office. The only slight issues i have found have been subtle differences in the layout. This has been particularly apparent with Keynote, when i have sent my slide decks to a Win using colleage and noticed that the transitions are substituted and the timings are a bit different. To be fair, i have found the same thing using Mac Office files on Win Office from time to time, as you may have already encountered. I assume that a lot of the occasional incompatibility is down to MS as i use OpenOffice at home and that has no issues with my Mac created files.

I went from MS Office to Neo-Office to iWork. The latest version of iWork is outstandingly good. Opens all my excel word files a treat.

It's a no brainer, really.

I went from MS Office to Neo-Office to iWork. The latest version of iWork is outstandingly good. Opens all my excel word files a treat.

It's a no brainer, really.

Wait--which iWork program opens Excel files?

I work in Japanese-English translation, and one of the plagues of my existence is Japanese people who use Excel as a word processor because they can't figure out how to create tables in Word.

Wait--which iWork program opens Excel files?

I work in Japanese-English translation, and one of the plagues of my existence is Japanese people who use Excel as a word processor because they can't figure out how to create tables in Word.

In iWork '08 there is a spreadsheet program called "Numbers."

Wait--which iWork program opens Excel files?

I work in Japanese-English translation, and one of the plagues of my existence is Japanese people who use Excel as a word processor because they can't figure out how to create tables in Word.

iWork 08 has NUMBERS (http://www.apple.com/iwork/)

I bought iWork '08 soon after it came out and so far I've been impressed. There have been a few issues with Keynote bombing but since I am a bigger user of Pages and Numbers that didn't really matter to me (they'll fix it soon).

Pages makes writing a document seem a lot less complicated and overburdened than what I am used to with Microsoft Office and Word. I prefer Numbers to Excel (though the lack of pivot tables bothers me) simply because it's better looking and it runs faster (IMO).

Does iWork have an alternative to Entourage so I can sync my calendar on an exchange server wirelessly with my blackberry?

That would clinch it for me.

The only annoying thing about saving Pages documents in Word format is that one must use the "Export" function in the file menu instead of being able to use "Save As."

Apple should offer the option to save a file in multiple formats when using the Save As option. Support of Open Office XML would be ideal.

I've been using iWork for three years, and I am currently running 08. A few thoughts off the top of my head:

1. Keynote is better than Powerpoint. I build everything in it and then just export it as .ppt. I save it onto a USB drive and then connect it to a computer (running Win XP) connected to a projector and everything works seamlessly.

2. I like the media integration with Pages. It's easy to pull stuff out of iPhoto and drop it into a Pages document. Pages saves as .doc and that works fine, too.

3. I still use Excel. I haven't given Numbers much of a fair shot yet, I'll have to report back on that one.

My concern would be how do the Windows users I send my work to like it. It doesn't mean a whole lot to me if it is more efficient or prettier of my colleagues have compatibility issues.

Does iWork have an alternative to Entourage so I can sync my calendar on an exchange server wirelessly with my blackberry?

That would clinch it for me.

No. You could get MissingSync (http://www.markspace.com/) to fill that void though.

My concern would be how do the Windows users I send my work to like it. It doesn't mean a whole lot to me if it is more efficient or prettier of my colleagues have compatibility issues.

You just export the file to a word or excel compatible file and your done. E-mail them that.