Anyone recomending or not Office installing?

lisalisa
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hi,

new in the Mac world (but always expecting to get in) I now have my doubts about installing Office, is there any advise? it works well? what else can I use instead of Word, Exel and Power Point?

and by the way Im delighted with my iMac MA876 wich here (Brazil) costs as much as twice as everywhere else in the planet!!!!

so I cant afford to make any mistakes....

thanks a lot

Lisa

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    jbljbl Posts: 555member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lisa View Post


    Hi,

    new in the Mac world (but always expecting to get in) I now have my doubts about installing Office, is there any advise? it works well? what else can I use instead of Word, Exel and Power Point?

    and by the way Im delighted with my iMac MA876 wich here (Brazil) costs as much as twice as everywhere else in the planet!!!!

    so I cant afford to make any mistakes....

    thanks a lot

    Lisa





    Hard to say without knowing more about how you are going to use it. For 95% of what most people use Word for you could use TextEdit which is free on your machine. If you are doing your own presentations, Apple's Keynote is a better alternative to PowerPoint, and it comes with Pages (a word processor that can do many of the things TextEdit can't) and Numbers (a spreadsheet with some page layout features). Nisus Writer Pro is also a pretty good alternative to Word. I think these programs can do pretty much everything Word and PowerPoint can do if you don't have to share documents. If you have to share documents, you may be stuck with buying the same program the people you share with use (probably Office) because the translations are never quite right. Excel also has a lot more functions than any of its competitors so if you need anything esoteric you should check before buying.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    randyjohnstonrandyjohnston Posts: 24member
    install office it's AWESOME



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lisa View Post


    Hi,

    new in the Mac world (but always expecting to get in) I now have my doubts about installing Office, is there any advise? it works well? what else can I use instead of Word, Exel and Power Point?

    and by the way Im delighted with my iMac MA876 wich here (Brazil) costs as much as twice as everywhere else in the planet!!!!

    so I cant afford to make any mistakes....

    thanks a lot

    Lisa





  • Reply 3 of 11
    dmzdmz Posts: 5,775member
    You'd be better off getting a copy of XP, Parallels and installing a PC version of Office -- IMHO the mac version is somewhere between a toy, a snail, and a sociopath.
  • Reply 4 of 11
    randyjohnstonrandyjohnston Posts: 24member
    i have to disagree with that, the mac office program is awesome and works fine.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    I have Microsoft Office 2004 (which is very affordable!) - but I find myself using it less and less.

    For letter-writing and and documents with lots of illustrations, I find that Pages is a better choice.



    Same thing with Excel. I keep it handy - but I find myself using Numbers more and more.



    There are certainly features in Office that the Apple applications do not have. But to be honest, my type of usage does not require them.



    If you are permanently swapping documents with MS Office using colleagues. Get Office. If you are interested in layout and visual presentation, its certainly easier to create nice tasteful documents in Pages and Numbers.



    I think you can try out the iWork tools for free.



    C.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    dmzdmz Posts: 5,775member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by randyjohnston View Post


    i have to disagree with that, the mac office program is awesome and works fine.



    I'll admit that it's probably not getting worse, and I've only used the next-to-latest iteration.



    But.



    If you work with other people on PCs, then definitely go native -- font issues, and getting PPTs ready for without having to worry about compatibility is a must. I find that I have to cross my fingers to get page breaks to not change, or wingdings to not flip out, or to hope the other person's picked the right version of Times/Times Roman/Times New Roman -- a lot of little nagging things that, if you go native, are fire-and-forget issues.



    That goes for the rest of Office too. One less thing to worry about.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    bigmclargehugebigmclargehuge Posts: 175member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lisa View Post


    Hi,

    new in the Mac world (but always expecting to get in) I now have my doubts about installing Office, is there any advise? it works well? what else can I use instead of Word, Exel and Power Point?

    and by the way Im delighted with my iMac MA876 wich here (Brazil) costs as much as twice as everywhere else in the planet!!!!

    so I cant afford to make any mistakes....

    thanks a lot

    Lisa





    NeoOffice is an office suite that is fully compatible with MS Office's suite both in PC and Mac versions. It's free too. The only drawback I've noticed with this set of tools is the load time is slow.
  • Reply 8 of 11
    galleygalley Posts: 971member
    Try the demo of iWork '08. You may find that it suit your needs perfectly.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    talksense101talksense101 Posts: 1,738member
    iWork 08 is quite cheap when compared to MS Office. It might suit your purpose if you don't like Openoffice or Neo-Office. There are other office suites like Nexus etc, that I am not familiar with. Almost all of the products in the market offer compatibility with MS Office too.
  • Reply 10 of 11
    maclemmingmaclemming Posts: 46member
    If you are used to Office, then install XP via bootcamp and put it on your windows partition....



    Keynote is awesome and a much better presentation tool than PowerPoint... but Pages and Numbers could use some improvement... So you are pretty much paying the $80 for Keynote and some fluff!
  • Reply 11 of 11
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacLemming View Post


    If you are used to Office, then install XP via bootcamp and put it on your windows partition....



    Keynote is awesome and a much better presentation tool than PowerPoint... but Pages and Numbers could use some improvement... So you are pretty much paying the $80 for Keynote and some fluff!



    Completely disagree!



    It's Word that's a monster that should be hunted-down with villagers carrying pitchforks.



    If you want to write text professionally, you need a simple and reliable text editor. Scrivener is probably the best tool for this.



    If you want to create short punchy documents, brochures, business reports, school projects - Pages is a much better tool



    If you want to do DTP and layout subtantial original text - inDesign is awesome.



    If you want to do HTML - Anything is better. Avoid Word like the plague.



    Word has tried for a long time to be all things to all people. But the fact of the matter is that Word is only good one thing, being compatible with other Word documents.



    C.
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