Re: iWorks vs Office.


Kurt Ullman wrote:
One of my clients is running me nuts with requiring .docx and I have an older version of Word for Mac. So, I am wondering if anyone used iWork programs (Pages/Numbers/Keynote) in lieu of Word/Excel/Ppt?

If so, I'd love to hear:
1. how well do they open & work with Word/Excel/Ppt files and convert them back, and interface with users of those programs

Pages does not support .docx format - only std. .doc and it's own format. - I've tried it on both .doc and .docx, sometimes it opens a .docx file, but content is only garbage.

2. how easy have you found it to get rolling with these and adapt from Word/Excel/Ppt practices, habits, user environments?

Very bad experiences. I don't use either Excel or any other spread*** that much, but a test gave that Numbers is slow and sometimes can make errors in Excel sheets, - losing references etc..

3. have any of you upgraded to Leopard from OS ~10.6 or so, and if so how many problems did it cause with existing programs you use?

You mean 10.4.x to leopard? - 10.6 is the upcoming 'SnowLeopard' and hasn't been released yet... - I myself have upgraded two machines - a MacPro with the original 10.4.11 to 10.5.x and a MDD - also from 10.4.x to 10.5.x. No problems here. Others have reported errors and bugs if they have upgraded upon an existing system. If you aren't sure, then use the mode 'archive and Install' in the 10.5.x installer. this will work just fine. - And this method is needed if you upgrade from a 10.3.x Panther system, 'cause you can only upgrade directly from a system one number lower.

Most 10.4.x applications and tools also work fine with Leopard, but to be sure, you need to try each app for yourself and find out whether it'll work or not.

NOTE. do always take a full backup before you install a new system...

Is OpenOffice another possibility?

Both Openoffice 3.0 (Intel only ver.) and NeoOffice 2.5.x are doing great jobs when opening docs - both .doc and docx - made with MSOffice Mac/Windows versions. Anyway, you have to be careful with spreadsheets. Opening these in NeoOffice and OpenOffice might cause some smaller problems like changing fonts, fonts sizes and sometimes also a break in references, but this also happens, when you open an Excel file made on a windows version of MSOffice and opens it in a Mac version. Both Openoffice and NeoOffice are freeware and can be downloaded from their respectively websites - www.openoffice.org and www.neooffice.org.

Cheers, Erik Richard.

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Erik Richard Sørensen, Member of ADC, <mac-manNOSP@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
NisusWriter - The Future In Multilingual Text Processing - www.nisus.com
OpenOffice.org - The Modern Productivity Solution - www.openoffice.org
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