I-works '08

[nadinbrzezinski]

Well folks, installed and running it. And there are several things that do concern me (and thankfully the vista machine has a copy of Word '07 so that should not be too much of a problem when final production finally comes)

First the good things:

It does open complex word documents... such as the manual I am working right now... it is complex...

But alas I-Works does not handle frames, so lets see if this is just a nomemclature problem or not. It converted my frames to something else, so when I take this file to my other computer lets see how mangled the file is. And trust me, if it is, you will be the first ones to know.. and if it is.. well no biggie, go down and get an older version of word that runs with cross office... cheaper than word for the mac, truly.



Oh that nice package with Works... has a copy of Word '03 in there.

But if you want this for a power user... it lacks some critical things...

Indexes anyone? Now for anybody putting a complex document that needs indexes I would not recommed this program for primary work. No way, no how.

Search and replace is fairly weak, and againt this is a problem producing complex documents.

The grammar checker is weak (that is why I got Grammarian, by the way)

So at this point I would not recommend this program for anything beyond home use, and it is certainly sufficient for the great american novel. and probably most school work. But if you need to add an index on it... this is NOT your software.

Your alternatives are as follows:

Word: Yes I hear the groaning by many, even me... and if Apple wants to compete, they'd better take a good look at their main competitor and I hate to say it, but go there. Some basic things such as indexes are kind of critical in the enterprise setting.

Open Office: And no, I am not talking about Neo, I am talking about Open Office, which will handle frames and will handle indexes... I played with Neo for a few and didn't like it, one bit... and it was the weaknesses in formating and other things such as what I just pointed

http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/new.html

Is open office perfect? No... the notes feature is more than just weak on it, but it will do everything else fairly well.

Hell I may just download it today (used it for years in the Windows machine, until '07 came about) and just run it.
__________________

[romana]

1. iWork

I've been using iWork 08 for lectures and presentations this semester. I like Pages and Keynote, but Pages is definitely lacking in a few features. I often type in a list of references as I work, and want to alphabatize them at the end. As near as I can figure, you have to put things in tables to be able to sort them in Pages. Word had a nifty paragraph sort feature that was perfect for sorting reference lists. I miss it.

Keynote is actually quite nice, and I prefer it to PowerPoint. I don't have many complaints about it so far.

Numbers, however, needs considerable work before it will be a useful application. It is limited, and worse, just clunky to use. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but Excel is an indispensible product for me. I am excited that Apple added a spreadsheet application to their iWork package, however, and look forward to seeing it improve.

--sah

[Poiuyt]

2. You've done your research

It would be nice to see a list of the pros and cons of each word processing program for Macs.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. You know it could be done

if we could get demo copies of LaTEX, Mellel et al

But I have the nasty suspicion that a full featured program wil be Word or Open Office

Now for light writing I definitely recomend Bean... saves in RTF, and it is blazingly fast

And for light DTP... actually I-Works

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Ok I found the problem

transfering my short adventure from I-Work format to DOC... and printing it... it lost oh about two paragraphs

I hope it does not loose any after making it work and working with the DOC document

Nope, that's not good

And yep, next document... that is what Open Office, no, NOT Neo Office, OPEN OFFICE, is for.

:-)