iWork ‘08 Vs. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac!

19 Responses so far

1. Vinod January 24, 2008 6:35 am

   Congratulations on your thoughts to buy a Mac. You won’t regret it!
   Btw, You don’t have to pirate iWorks’08. Most of the time , it is preinstalled on the Mac. If you decide to buy it , you buy the serial number online from the Apple store using credit card or buy the CD on the retail store. The Microsoft Office 2008 is not available as a separate download. It is pushed as a ‘System update’ on the Mac. Hence you see a lot of people seeding the installation file for it for easy download.

2. ReviewSaurus January 24, 2008 12:44 pm

   @ Vinod : well, I don’t use pirated stuff as I mentioned in the post. I get all the serials for free…that’s the power of blogging :)

   The mac will come only after 2 months from now… :( Anyway, I saw people on the torrents seeding MS Office, So I’m guessing that it is available as a separate download too

3. Vinod January 24, 2008 12:54 pm

   How do you get all serials for free by blogging?!.. I’m curious.

4. ReviewSaurus January 24, 2008 1:02 pm

   @ Vinod : Well, that’s a secret :P
   Well, nothing like that. Because I write review of products, so it becomes easy for me to get the serials. I get approached by companies and they give me serials for reviewing the products. Sometimes, I just approach the companies and ask for the serials.

   However, I would also like to add that I still keep my reviews unbiased :)

5. Roberto Carlos Moscoso January 25, 2008 12:37 am

   Congratz on the mac buy :} if you’re talking money, iworks is only 89 dollars vs MsOffice which starts on 200, ok with that said, if you use macros, and work with a lot of different functions on excel and are one of those who just loves excel, numbers (in iwork) wont do it for you, but if you like to do things that just work, clean, easy and fast, specially fast and clean, numbers is sweet! for an unexperienced spreadsheet user, it’s the best experience you can get, and it comes cheaper, besides, the full version of office has a few things like the mail program and some others I don’t remember nor do I use! for an office suit iworks just cuts it right, save you’re self from pain, agony and loss of money and just buy iworks :D its worth it.

6. ReviewSaurus January 25, 2008 5:59 am

   Thanks Roberto for taking time to leave the comment :)
   Well, I’m really not worried about much things. I just wanted to test that how pirates are dealing with different companies. I mostly use Google docs but I love zoho a lot and probably will shift to that only. It not only gives me the flexibility to stay online but I don’t have to worry about lot of other factors.

   Neo office always there as far as advanced spreadsheet is concerned. I’m live on free and open source stuff.

   However, as you are suggesting iworks, I’ll definitely give it a try and if I find it as you are suggesting…..I’ll buy it too :)

7. Sumesh January 25, 2008 11:24 am

   I’m thinking of buying Keynote(isn’t it the presentation app?) plus download Neo office when I buy the MBP/MB.

   Keynote can make beautiful graphs and charts, like those on Problogger poll results. That alone is enough for me to spring and buy it!

   And yes, like you Mayank, I too live on free open-source stuff, except some times like KeyNote.

8. Judgewest February 4, 2008 6:53 pm

   I suspect the reasoning behind Office 2008 being easily spread via torrent and iWork not being, is that people want Office 2008 and probably are not very much interested in iWork.

   When you look into the piracy of the Microsoft OS World, you will notice that Windows XP is still largely in demand, more so than the Vista counterpart.

   Is this because Vista is harder to crack so piraters have stayed away? No. It’s simply because people WANT Windows XP and don’t want Vista. If people won’t steal it, what chance is there of people buying it???

   Time will tell for the iWork suite compared to Office, but I believe this round has gone to Microsoft. Bring on Round 2… or 3… or …?

9. ReviewSaurus February 4, 2008 7:03 pm

   @ Judgewest : I’m glad!!! Atleast there is someone who’s talking in favor of Microsoft, normally I don’t get too much visitors who are supporter of Microsoft! Sir, You certainly rock!

   The points you said are what exactly I was hoping that someone will write and it’s good too see that my wishes got complete before they died :)

   As far as bringing on more rounds are concerned, I’ll definitely think of doing that :)

10. Vinod February 4, 2008 7:41 pm

    Yesterday I bought a copy of iWorks ‘08. I have been evaluating Microsoft Office 2008 and iWorks’08 for last couple of weeks. Office 2008 runs a tad bit slow on iMac. iWorks with its limited feature set worked quick and well for me.

11. Mog February 5, 2008 3:15 am

    hey do you know where to get cheap iwork in australia, melbourne. And what is the best program to create really good presentations on mac. Are there any good fps games too?

12. ReviewSaurus February 5, 2008 4:28 am

    @ Mog : I’m not sure about where you can get it cheap or discounted copy of iwork in melbourne, australia (physical at least), however I searched about iwork on ebay and found that there were lot of sellers selling iwork (box packed) at discounted prices.

    However, there was no one selling it for cheap at ebay australia. But, if you can get it shipped from US/Canada, then this link should be able to help you : http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=iwork&category0=

13. ReviewSaurus February 5, 2008 4:32 am

    @ Vinod : So, What do you think that iWorks is a better choice or MS Office ? I guess it’ll be MS Office for power users and iWork for users who don’t want to do much with office apps..right ?

    Anyway, how was MS Office 2008, is it similar to normal Microsoft office ?

14. Dilip P February 19, 2008 7:37 pm

    I’m using both iWork ‘08 & Microsoft Office ‘08 for MAC. To be honest, they are both good in their own ways. Keynote kicks ass and beats Powerpoint hands-down. Pages in iWork is great as well, the templates in them are pretty good compared to the one’s in Word. Now for one good thing in Office that beats iWork. Office has a application called the Entourage. Entourage is a mail client/calendar/project manager All-in-One.

    Mail & iCal is nothing compared to Entourage. I don’t see a slow-down in computing while working with Office applications. Now that should be something in support of MSFT :)

15. Vinod February 19, 2008 9:52 pm

    @ReviewSaurus:
    My thoughts are exactly similar to Dilip’s. Entourage was really stable but unfortunately I cannot connect to office VPN.

16. renzo11 February 28, 2008 1:30 am

    Thanks for all the comments…..I am new to Mac…just bought the MacBook Air this week after my PC laptop was stolen. I work on Excel often and Word all the time. I have a trial version of iWorks that seems to work great and is much cheaper than Office 2008. My main question is simple - many of the people I deal with use the steadfast MS Office 2003 version and not everyone has upgraded to Office 2007. If I transact using either iWorks or Office 2008 for Mac will others using older software be able to open my documents? I would hate to drop $400 on Office 2008 and be the only person that I can send stuff to.

17. JG March 1, 2008 2:51 pm

    renzo11 - I am in a similar situation. It’s all workable, but a pain! I use Office 2007, iworks and Mac Office 2003, all exchange files just fine. The main problem is versions, Keynote is great, exports to PowerPoint etc. You just need to keep a check on how you save the files. The real bug is the occasional loss of formats when saving as 2003. Interesting that Mac software will save as an MS equivalent, MS won’t.

18. Brando March 5, 2008 11:11 pm

    I became a mac user over a year ago, and before then I was a pretty big pirate. After becoming a mac user I have had less of a desire to pirate. I think there are a few reasons why: 1. Mac’s come with some great starter software so there isn’t much that needs to be pirated from the start. 2. Apple programs are much more reasonably priced, and are much more user friendly. I don’t mind shelling out the money for apple programs because I think they are worth it. I think a lot of people would be more willing to pay for the software if it was more reasonably priced. 3. I think mac users have more pride in Apple than windows users have in Microsoft. (ask each about Vista and Leopard) Oh and iwork is much better than Word 08… I couldn’t be happier.

19. Chrules March 24, 2008 5:03 am

    #renzo11 congrats on the MBA.. I mysellf just bought a Macbook, and i get it in 2 days :p
    I know that in Office 2007 you can choose to save you files for the older version. I think this also is for Office 2008. As far as for iWorks i don’t know yet what format it saves the Office documents in. But you shouldn’t be worried, cause there is a lot of software out there to convert 07(08) to 03 (ex: meaning from docx to doc)
    File converter for windows: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en
    For Mac: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ab66b5bf-37c3-41bb-945e-784782fc582c&DisplayLang=en

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