[rei_vilo]

Bonjour,

Congratulations for the great comparison!

iWork' s Pages is slow on my iMac G5 20.1 MHz. Three problems: In France, TOC uses to be at the end of the book, and this option is not available. No template for CD and DVD are provided. I need checking in three languages: English, French and Spanish. How to get all that?

So I'm still waiting for iWork' 09!

Best regards from France,

[whshep]

The review understates the difficulty of working with images in MS Word. I've been using Word 2007 with Fusion, but my experience of the Mac version was always just as bad; the interface is just plain buggy. Importing the images usually leaves them truncated; you have to use a menu to set the wrap in order to see the images properly. Settings for placement and wrap don't stick. Any changes cause the image to disappear off the page, or ruin the wrap. Group images (such as figure & caption) wrecks the wrap and perhaps the placement. Images will move with text even if you set them to stay on page; the settings change without warning. Any revision to your text will result in all sorts of layout problems, because the image settings will inevitably change themselves. Sometimes the wrap just can't be fixed, and you have to delete the images and start over again.

Working with images in Word is the seventh level of hell.

[wg45678]

I disagree with the disparaging of NeoOffice. I have NeoOffice 2.2.3, MS Office 2004, and Pages (from iWork '08) loaded on my MacBook. I use Writer from NeoOffice for nearly all of my work processing. The only time I use MS Office is when a receive a document and I want to check the formatting in NeoOffice vs Word. I rarely use Pages, perhaps because of familiarity with MS Word (and Adobe Framemaker) writing technical documents in a corporate environment. NeoOffice's familiar menu structure and virtually identical Word capabilities encourage me to use it (plus Open Office or NeoOffice appear to have taken the best features from Word and Adobe Framemaker without their idiosyncrasies or penchant for crashing). Open/Neo Office are both aided by free templates you can get via OpenOffice's extensions web site that give it template capability rivaling those of Word. So if you're searching for a word processor, take a look at NeoOffice.

[bynkii]

wg45678 said:

I disagree with the disparaging of NeoOffice. I have NeoOffice 2.2.3, MS Office 2004, and Pages (from iWork '08) loaded on my MacBook. I use Writer from NeoOffice for nearly all of my work processing. The only time I use MS Office is when a receive a document and I want to check the formatting in NeoOffice vs Word. I rarely use Pages, perhaps because of familiarity with MS Word (and Adobe Framemaker) writing technical documents in a corporate environment. NeoOffice's familiar menu structure and virtually identical Word capabilities encourage me to use it (plus Open Office or NeoOffice appear to have taken the best features from Word and Adobe Framemaker without their idiosyncrasies or penchant for crashing). Open/Neo Office are both aided by free templates you can get via OpenOffice's extensions web site that give it template capability rivaling those of Word. So if you're searching for a word processor, take a look at NeoOffice.

It's not disparagement to point out real limitations in the current state of OpenOffice and NeoOffice, such as OS integration and problems with embedded objects. If those are not issues for you, that's cool, but they're still limitations.

[macmusicmaker]

Mercy me, do I agree. Seventh level of hell and then some!!!

[biagio]

I own both products. I disagree that it is easier to layout in word than pages. I love how pages deals with images and font placement. However as an attorney I need to work with longer documents and not having an autosave feature in pages is the deal breaker for day to day use. At least three times Pages has crashed on me and data was lost. An hour of time for a lawyer repeatedly wasted can get you fired quickly. I do save roughly once per hour normally but its nice to have an autosave that deals with the in between times.

Additionally, the translator from Pages to Mac Word 2004 was horrible. I have no idea about the pages 08 to word 08 translation as I haven't tried it.

So for frequent use items: client intake forms, fax cover sheets & quick correspondence I prefer pages for everything else I use word 08.

One excuse could be that the problems with pages failing came within weeks of installing. Perhaps pages was less stable then.

I really wanted to use pages as a replacement especially considering that office took 5 years between upgrades (and don't get me started on how little they did with entourage) but unfortunately I don't trust Pages enough. Maybe next year.

[macmusicmaker]

I also own both products. I can't say why pages crashes on you; there are so many weird things about computers and software that tend to make everyone's experience unique. It has only crased on me a time or two in the past three years.

Thankfully, I'm COMPULSIVE about saving. I don't even think about it anymore. No sooner than I type a few paragraphs, my autopilot kicks in and I hit command-s. It probably stems from a few bad experiences back in grad school when I lost a few things I really would rather have not lost!!!

I too am curious about the word 08 / pages 08 translation...hopefully they got it right.

[leng06]

need a quick help.

followed the instructions on how to add a bookmark (To create a bookmark, select the text you want to turn into a bookmark. Click Inspector in the toolbar, click the Link Inspector button, click Bookmark, and then click Add ().) but would not let me click on the Add () button. what am i doing wrong?