I’m currently finding out whether I should use iWork or Microsoft Office for Mac on my MacBook.
At my work we have been using Microsoft Office for Mac for a while now, and as far as I have heard from some users, it doesn’t compare to the Windows version of Office in any way. The interface is way different from the Windows version, and it still has problems reading out some Windows generated files.
Some functions aren’t working the same way as it would in the Windows version, so if you’re currently using Office on a Windows machine, it would take you some time before you would have found out all the functions in the Mac version.
iWork on the other side, is a complete different office package. It was created by Apple (woohoo!) but still has the ability to open Microsoft Office generated files. I haven’t actually looked at it so far, so I think I will give it a chance, and try it out for a couple of weeks to see if it will fit my needs.
There is also a free package available. It’s called OpenOffice and was created by Oracle. It does it’s job very well, but if you frequently work with documents that were created with Microsoft Office, you might encounter some problems, such as lay-outs not showing up as they were designed.