I can see how your world may fit in numbers without excel being necessary.

Au contraire, few complaints about numbers are this type. And I don't feel dumb at all - I feel that numbers is dumb. I can't be dumb, because I can understand big complicated phrases like "low level database entity relationship modelling" (something I'd usually do in a database rather than a spreadsheet, but can be done quite satisfactorily in excel). I find most complaints are about excel-type features that can't be done with numbers, either in the same manner or in another manner either.

There are many such show-stopping functions for me, graphing being one of the least of my worries.

I've seen hundreds of companies use macros successfully to enhance their productivity. Using excel without using VBA is like buying a brand new car so you can park it in the driveway, open the door and listen to the car radio whilst you are in the garden. Kind of undervaluing the potential, really.

Bad habits come from users not programs. Sometimes a program promotes bad habits by its shortcomings. I don't believe this particular habit is anything to do with excel as a program.

Refer above habit. "Carefully define" is usually not necessary unless one has this habit mentioned. A dedicated print preview worksheet duplicates data presentation but can be done quite easily.

With the modern advent of LCD screens I have decided I prefer clarity with CRT radiation than blurriness with more desk space. As a compromise, I print a lot of product. Some people have no choice - their workplaces require hard copies. The paperless office is a nice theory but rarely implemented in a workable fashion. Congratulations if you have mastered what only few can.

I've always found excel date calculations to be excemplorary. But then, I can format cells appropriately without resorting to the hack of splitting hours and minutes across cells which of course causes unnecessary complications with calculations. I've never used date calculations in numbers.

Most of my excel files are less than half a meg and open in well under a second (perhaps 1/10th?)

In excel, break everything into chunks with each chunk holding no more than 16,776,960 pieces of information at the most (this is sufficient for most users I find).

I look forward to playing shop with numbers when it grows up, but for now I'll stick to the only good thing ever to come out of microsoft, which is such a tried and proven workhorse that many users find it irreplaceable (by numbers or anything else).

After the Leopard upgrade I have not re-installed Office.

Pages does everything I need and it's features are easy to access.
Word does not integrate graphics or complex layouts easily. Only good at text. A bit late 80's when you see how Pages works.

Keynote is extremely good and blends sound and graphics so seamlessly. So slick.
Powerpoint seems old, sad and feature poor in comparison. When using it I am reminded that it doesn't seem to have improved for years and years.

Numbers is a fantastic tool for mainstream use but does not do advanced financial modeling.
Excel is more than just a spreadsheet. Once you dig into it, it is almost like a menu assisted programing language. But much of it's functionality is very hard to learn - much like a programing language. I see 90% of the features never used by 90% of the population. Most around me have it simply to open the price list that is sent to them.

iWork '08 is a great package and breath of fresh air in an environment where Office hasn't really evolved for a very long time and so feels stale.

i find documents formatted in word often don't appear correctly in pages. my 2c of frustration in a mixed windows/mac home.

Excel remains the best (and only remotely good) thing to come out of Microsoft, though I can understand home users using Numbers for basic stuff, especially in tandem with Keynote.

One spreadsheet I work on every month has 30 sheets, about 30 columns per sheet, anywhere from 20 to 6000 rows and about 60,000 formulas all up. Numbers wouldn't cope with that, and it's not meant to.

I am looking forward to a good comparison. After finally using Keynote, i will never use powerpoint again.

I have dabbled with Pages and what i need to know/learn are how to do things like create/edit styles, cross-references, TOC, field codes, section breaks, etc

One other thing is integration of Endnote or something similar. This is the last sticking point for me

As for numbers, i have not really looked as yet. I am not a big s/sheet user anymore, mainly for recording student grades. One thing that like about excel for this are 'lists' where you can sort by each column - i really hope this type of feature is available in numbers.

Like Ralph, i did not install M$ office on my new machine and hope that i won't need to (Leopard is coming soon)...


ETA: i find the saves slow (Pages and Keynote) and that the file size (Pages?) is quite large by comparison with word...

This thread is now the sticky definitive discussion place for the topic (thanks whoever stuck it, I was meaning to do something similar but was beaten).

An article is on the way (got distracted by a few different articles and then decided I would wait until I used Office 08 which I am aquiring a 'trial' of atm )

It won't be an article on which is better because if I have learnt anything it is that that is largely personal opinion. The article will focus more on what each app can and can't do and what kind of users each suits - stay tuned it's in the pipeline (aka open in TextEdit right now)

Ars technica has done an initial review of Office 2008.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/...008-review.ars

There main conclusion is that it is faster than the 2004 version and is more mac looking.

Having read a few reviews about Office 08 we've decided to give it a miss and totally dedicate ourselves to running our Mac software to it's capabilities.
Today I swapped out Entourage for Mail and I've started to put all my contacts into address book at last!
Over the last few days my wife has been getting our invoicing ready on Numbers (she was quite used to Excel and says she loves this one!) and we're getting our pricelists and letterheads ready in Pages.
Any presentation stuff will definitely end up on Keynote. It's streamlined beauty! Mrs. Blinder was an expert on powerpoint and is very impressed with the high quality of Keynote.
To me the beauty of these programmes is that the software doesn't get in the road of creating and making and impressing! I don't have to know weird little things about it. That's always irked me about MS stuff.
It feels like a weight has been lifted.
There is no debate in this household.

As someone who is trying to use iWork 08 as much as possible, but falls back to Office 2004 on occasion, my assessment is that iWork 08 is fine if you live in a pure Mac/iWork environment (personal use only, Mac/iWork office) but if you need to cross-platform then Office is useful because it is slightly more compatible with Windows Office. I assume Office 2008 is even more compatible.

My 2 main gripes:
- iWork 08 can only save in iWork format ... you need to export to .xls, .doc, .ppt ... which means you end up duplicating the file if the file will be cross-platform.
- Office is expensive ... even though it's a lot cheaper than it used to be!

BTW, I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's using Office 08 with Microsoft Exchange server accounts (ie: Entourage in a corporate environment).

i am interested in hearing of anyone's experiences with the inbuilt reference manager with Office 08 (word).*

Conversely, experiences of anyone who has used Pages and the latest release of Sente?? I gave it a quick try, though am too busy with an other project to have a good play


*i may have already posted this

If you use macros you'll be wanting to stick to Office 2004 then. The review failed to mention that VBA is no longer supported in the Mac version of Excel.

Remember, Numbers is only at version 1.0...

Citations and Bibliographies work great if that is what you mean. Put you citation in the toolbox and double click whenever you want to reference something in your article. It then creates a citation list or bibliography for you automatically.
If you mean the reference tools then they are pretty handy too. I like the encarta tool, really easy. The online referencing is really good and easy.

Its these tools which made me change back to office after using iwork for the past 6 months

Could someone please merge this thread and this thread ... too confusing!

In a couple of days I will try and sort it out so that the article is the new sticky at the top of the OS X forum with this discussion all merged into one place.

Just have to work out how to do that....

Hi there
I've found andrew's article and all your comments really interesting. Thanks for your input.
I have been a PC girl until 3 weeks ago, when I made the conversion after about 4 years of thinking about it (who said I was impulsive?!). I have used Macs at Uni for graphic design and loved the size of the screen and the smoothness of the platform.
I did, however, buy Office 2004 instead of iWork. The main reason being that my Uni is both PC and Mac but uses MS and for ease of sending documents to tutors and the like, I went with Office. Also given that my husband is on PC (so last century ) its easier to send him stuff if its in MS.
I may, however, get iWork at a later stage once Uni is over and I am working for myself. So reading your viewpoints is a great help.
Thanks again