My son does school work on a PC at school. He would like to work on Word files a home and then be able to run them at school. Do I have to buy Office or will iWork or other programs work well enough that he wont have a mess after file coversions?
My son does school work on a PC at school. He would like to work on Word files a home and then be able to run them at school. Do I have to buy Office or will iWork or other programs work well enough that he wont have a mess after file coversions?
Textedit actually reads, writes, and saves Work documents, so that's what I primarily use when there's no heavy formatting. Pages (a part of iWork) is a lickable app that's easy to learn, but it's more of a stripped-down InDesign than a Word competitor, and it doesn't have a lot of Word features, most of all Track Changes, which I really miss. When I have to interact with heavy-duty Word crap, I usually fire up one of the free open-source Office-like programs I have that I can never decide between (AbiWord, OpenOffice, NeoOffice J). If you really have to have Word for mac, though, you might be able to argue for an academic discount if it's for your son's school work.
If you want Office, buy it through Apple Online Education Store, and if asked for proof (which they rarely, if ever do), present them your son's school ID.
OpenOffice2.0 is free, it looks sortof like a windows app because it runs in x11 (the traditional unix window manager) but it reads and writes .doc (MS word document) files just peachy in my experiance.
But if you must go the MS rout, get the teacher and student package at a place like CompUSA or Frys, they dont bother checking school IDs, and if by some chance they do, show them your kids school ID -- They mst likely will just glance at it and ring you up, if they do mention that you do not qualify, simply appoligize for the mis-understanding and say that you cant justify paying the full price of ~$379. As a former retail emploee, I can tell you, a small(er) sale is better to them than no sale at all.
Also, if you have friends or family attending or working for a university, ask them about the Microsoft Campus Agreement (I think that is the name) they may be able to score you the office suit for OSX for $5-$10
If you want Office, buy it through Apple Online Education Store, and if asked for proof (which they rarely, if ever do), present them your son's school ID.
That's it.
You could buy the $149 student/teacher edition of Office for OS X at any Apple or CompUSA store as well. You don't have to provide any kind of proof to buy this version either. The v.X version I bought contained 3 serials as well so you could install on 3 separate computers.
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Originally posted by evilcat
My son does school work on a PC at school. He would like to work on Word files a home and then be able to run them at school. Do I have to buy Office or will iWork or other programs work well enough that he wont have a mess after file coversions?
Textedit actually reads, writes, and saves Work documents, so that's what I primarily use when there's no heavy formatting. Pages (a part of iWork) is a lickable app that's easy to learn, but it's more of a stripped-down InDesign than a Word competitor, and it doesn't have a lot of Word features, most of all Track Changes, which I really miss. When I have to interact with heavy-duty Word crap, I usually fire up one of the free open-source Office-like programs I have that I can never decide between (AbiWord, OpenOffice, NeoOffice J). If you really have to have Word for mac, though, you might be able to argue for an academic discount if it's for your son's school work.
That's it.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14743
www.openoffice.org
It is at least worth a try, you cant beat free
But if you must go the MS rout, get the teacher and student package at a place like CompUSA or Frys, they dont bother checking school IDs, and if by some chance they do, show them your kids school ID -- They mst likely will just glance at it and ring you up, if they do mention that you do not qualify, simply appoligize for the mis-understanding and say that you cant justify paying the full price of ~$379. As a former retail emploee, I can tell you, a small(er) sale is better to them than no sale at all.
Also, if you have friends or family attending or working for a university, ask them about the Microsoft Campus Agreement (I think that is the name) they may be able to score you the office suit for OSX for $5-$10
Originally posted by Gene Clean
If you want Office, buy it through Apple Online Education Store, and if asked for proof (which they rarely, if ever do), present them your son's school ID.
That's it.
You could buy the $149 student/teacher edition of Office for OS X at any Apple or CompUSA store as well. You don't have to provide any kind of proof to buy this version either. The v.X version I bought contained 3 serials as well so you could install on 3 separate computers.