I think iwork has improved immensely but when it comes to TOC and chapters it isn't up to Word. To throw a spanner into the works I went open source and downloaded NeoOffice. Meets my needs as an academic writer.

As I've said before, in my opinion VBA has never been adequately supported on the Mac in ANY version of excel for mac (a third of the commands are there, a third aren't recognised, and a third don't work properly). It's therefore a good thing that I use a PC, running windows, for all my excel/VBA work.

I have been using the iWork 08 suite for two weeks now. In terms of the functionality that I need (as a law student) it seems to be fine. I'm still unsure of how to best use a lot of things though. One thing that I definitely do appreciate is how it is priced compared to the MS Office package!

A complaint that I do have, and it is pretty significant, is that Numbers does not seem to have any "Freeze Panes" or "Split Panes" option, unlike MS Excel. This is incredibly annoying when I am trying to update my weekly expenditure records. If anyone knows any way to get around this please feel free to tell me!

I have put some time into using Pages now. There are some things that i do find a little annoying - possibly based on having used word for so long. I find formatting (using styles) takes an extra step. I do like aspects of it though. I am getting used to the interface, though am not a fan of the formatting drawer - maybe i am too used to the word formatting pallete (expandable menus).

I do not like having to dig for the word count and the grammar feature is obviously in its early stages of development. I will not be able to fully adopt Pages until better TOC, Figures numbering and a variant of Words field codes are implemented (i have not found the latter yet - anyone?).

I have had a play with Word 08 and it seems OK. The Citations Manager is very basic and i will not use it (you have to manually enter references, amongst other things). I am currently using Endnote with Pages (export and scan), though hope to purchase Sente when i have the $$ (i am currently testing it).

I really wanted to switch away from M$, though Word 08 seems quite good. What will decide it for me will be how long it takes to update the CWYW features of reference managers to work with Word 08 - the longer i have to use Sente with Pages, the more i might get used to it. It seems much nicer than Endnote, though i invested a lot of time in learning Endnote (including finding it's limitations). I my even go back and try Mellel...

I use both products, at work i use my MBP with Office and Iwork.

At home we have several Mac and on those i have installed the family pack version of iWork,

To Equip all four Mac computers at home cost me around $250 to purchase one copy of Mac Office is around $600 (being delivered today) even if i were to purchase the student version it would have been nearly A$1000 for four copies. So from a price point of view there in no contest.

I use Word, Excel, and PPT all of the time, i have tried to use the Apple product in place of the Office suite but because i swap files with people all over the world the conversation is not practicable, imagine if you are editing a document created by somebody else and want to track changes then worked it on to another person and track their changes - too hard to convert. The same is true in Excel and PPT.

That said, my Wife was creating a project for school where she wanted to include video, i suggested that she use Keynote rather than PPT as in my view video in PPT is a pain, she found Keynote a breeze no problem at all, and i can tell everybody here the she is a technology free zone.

My Daughter uses a PC at school and she has a Mac at home, and i try and encourage her to use iWork, if for no other reason but to learn more than one package.

When i am creating documents for myself, either to print and fax, or PDF etc then i prefer to work in iWork, easier, simpler, better, oh and a lot cheeper.

best regards

Jeremy

iWork is a terrible, terrible program. Numbers is a complete joke and should have been omitted. If it was, the 90 dollar price tag may be worth it

You've clearly not used the latest Office.. it's a piece of crap.

Slow slow slow and bloated, iWork kicks it's arse (the same couldn't be said for previous versions of Office though - the latest version, dogs body!)

Actually I do use the latest Office on one of my work computers and the new excel kicks arse. I calc 150mb stock spreadsheets made up almost entirely of formulas sitting in front of raw data tables and it only takes 15-20 minutes on a basic desktop PC box. Admittedly the formatting and colourful toolbars are of no interest to me but the power is the duck's nuts. iWork is OK for the money but they shouldn't have even bothered with Numbers (unless it's soley for mum to workout a household budget)

hey isn't there a poll of what people use? would be interesting to see how many use what here.

That's about the extent of Numbers, and about how seriously I take it.

I've played with iWork on my cousin's Mac before. Keynote is fantastic, but with everything else, I'd prefer just to stick to Office. It's easier for me to transfer stuff from school to my Mac (and vice versa) with it. Maybe when I purchase a Mac laptop later this year (MB vs MBP debate still ongoing :P), I'll make the change. Until then, it's Office for me.

I think Microsoft mac version 2008 is the best

I am a little annoyed that Excel Mac doesn't support Macros created under Excel windows.

VBA isn't very well supported on the mac version of office at all. Yes - it sucks.

My vote is to buy neither. Download this for free instead:

Open office dot org