Comments on: Pages 08 vs MS Word

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:43:54 +0000

My enthusiasm for Pages waned dramatically when I discovered the absence of two critical features: outline numbering and cross-referencing. Mac app developers need to “grasp the nettle”

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 01:33:43 +0000

yep, Word no doubt has a stranglehold on the market. Rats! I’m trying my best to break free (we’re also using Neo Office in-store .. http://www.neooffice.org/), but can certainly see when documents are exchanged and Word is the standard .. there’s not much choice. Although adobe is doing some interesting things … if they had a commenting/revisioning system within acrobat reader, that might become an option for publishing documents for review. And then there’s http://acrobat.com … http://www.adobe.com/acom/ .. why not create and collaborate online at the same time???

By: Alister

Alister — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:49:18 +0000

Unashamedly ‘mac’ orientated, I was keen to see whether I could change to Pages from Word vX - I certainly liked the price! My work is word-processor intensive and I need to be able to exchange documents with clients without losing version control or giving them any headaches. Pages’ file format was my biggest barrier to entry. It took me back to the Mac SE20s where every file had to be converted to be read on a PC. It’s the same with Pages. The last thing I need when exchanging documents with clients is to have to convert (and reconvert) documents with every exchange - and who’s going to promise me 100% integrity every time?

So, reluctantly I upgraded to Office 2008:mac from Office:mac vX. It’s prettier, but that’s about it … at least I still get to curse Bill Gates whenever my autonumbering goes skuwiff!

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:12:26 +0000

Yep .. I haven’t seen Office 2008. I’ve been using the old office 2004. Might be harder to get me off Excel, but so far Pages has been a delight to use ..

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:23:19 +0000

Hearing this sort of thing is like music to my ears. (That a very old and sad cliche isn’t it? Sorry).

I am loathe - let me repeat that: loathe - to say this, but Office 2008 has had some major improvements and the page layout aspects are much improved.

Funny thing is that at the Office 2008 launch Word and Excel both frequently lagged on their demo machine- a maximum spec Macbook Pro. And most people at the launch walked away commenting about how it looked as though Microsoft had copied Pages button for button.

Not that they have a history of doing anything like that….. *cough*vista*cough*.