[Steve_S]

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The reason why I picked on Keynote was specifically because it was the most mature and most well liked.

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It's the most used because it's bundled with the Office Suite. I'm not sure it's the most liked, certainly not by those who have real alternatives like Keynote.

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there are certain things that PowerPoint can do that Keynote can't.

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...and vice versa.

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Unless you've got Keynote on both ends and even then, PowerPoint is better in a lot of cases.

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Yes, there is value in having the lowest common demoninator. That doesn't make Powerpoint a better product though. Keynote does have decent export options such as to PowerPoint, PDF, etc. Yes, you lose the fancy transitions, etc. but for general content distribution, it's still acceptable. To that point, in terms of sharing, there is a push to keep things in open / internet friendly formats anyway.
As for Pages and Numbers, they are still behind their Microsoft equivalents in most functional respects. However, I'm sure the gap will continue to close with each release.

[pcharles]

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there are certain things that PowerPoint can do that Keynote can't.

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...and vice versa.

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I've not found anything I can (and want) do in Keynote that cannot be done in Powerpoint. This could be because I try to avoid using crazy animations when they do not serve an educational purpose, but I have found something interesting. I find it works great to create my presentation in Powerpoint, port it to Keynote, and then present using Keynote. I use Profcast and it has problems with Powerpoint because many of my classroom slides have long chemistry problems in them.
It really is a beautiful program though, and I'd love to hear about special features I can use but have not thought about.

[Steve_S]

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One of the things that most users don't realize is that the move to not include VB in Office 2008 is actually forward thinking. MS on the windows side was set to kill VB in Office 2007 and replace it with VSTO.

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It would be forward thinking if Microsoft included VSTO with Mac Office 2008. That's not what's happening here. Microsoft is making a calculated guess that the majority of their Mac user based does not need VB script compatibility. I guess we'll find out. I'm sure most home users do not need it.
Really, there is no excuse for not keeping lock step compatibility between the PC and Mac versions of the product. End of story. Microsoft will be driving the power users to the free alternatives which offer these features. NeoOffice has a crappy interface, but it works. If I need to keep NeoOffice around for compatiblity reasons, then I see no need to specifically have the official Microsoft Office at home. Instead, I'd rather use a weaker product with a better design like iWork for 90%+ of my needs and use NeoOffice for the rest. But, that's just me.

[tylerkirkkelly]

I got Office 2007 for Windows and am running it under VMware Fusion. The new version of Word, featuring the "Ribbon" instead of most menus, is very hard to get used to. If you have used Word previously, you will find this "improvement" frustrating.
I will not be upgrading my Mac Office 2004 for this reason, and because I can use the Windows version of the new Office if need be.

[zeejay]

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As a result, I had to reformat my project in Word and it passed the "ruler lady" on its first try.

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On the bright side, you at least didn't have to do the writing in Word. Word 2004's pagination and display technologies are painfully bad, even on killer PowerPC hardware. I'll join the others here not upgrading MS Office on the Mac, which I've used since Word 5.1. Word infuriated me so much that I switched to writing in Smultron, WriteRoom, or Mail, before finally getting Pages. All my "final" output is done in InDesign or Dreamweaver anyway, and I can't be the only Mac user for whom that's true. All I need is a word processor. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Brettcamp]

Same here. I draft my stories in Scrivener and for short articles and general writing (I hate the term "word processing") I use freeware like the excellent Bean or even TextEdit or iText Express, all of which provide 90% of what most people need for most of their writing.
On the rare occasions I need Word functions like change tracking with an editor, I use NeoOffice, even though I have Word X. It crashes too often to use as anything but a last resort.
Oh, and for academic writing as with the OP, you might give Mellel a try. It's really made for dissertations, theses etc.

[NewGuyontheMac]

You misunderstand my point. I'm picking on Keynote because "Keynote" is more mature and "Keynote" is well liked among those who do presentations. So, the most mature offering in iWork and the best regarded still doesn't approach 100% feature parity with PowerPoint. I'm simply saying that it never will reach feature parity because the iWork team is more interested in producing an excellent easy to use app that does things the "Apple way". If along the way, they pick up some PowerPoint features, then so be it, but that's not their goal.

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Keynote does have decent export options such as to PowerPoint, PDF, etc.

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Yes, but they are "only" decent. I'm not coming from a position of someone that doesn't like Keynote. I love Keynote and have been using it a LOT since version 1. I've dug through the XML files to see how files are created. I even have a blog where I point out some of the ways to get more out of it. BUT, I've also fielded enough questions to know that when people want to send a presentation to another user, "decent" is not what they're looking for. They're looking for what they currently get from PowerPoint (which, of course is unfair because PowerPoint is already installed on most every business PC).

[PSM]

With iWork '08 I finally feel like I personally no longer need Office. But I have found while using it the last five months or so, that constantly having to convert to Office format when sharing documents with coworkers (even other Mac users) was getting frustrating, and at times I have switched back to Office for certain documents that are very hard to keep consistent formatting on between the two apps.
I would love to get rid of Office myself, but it's still sometimes easier to just use it than constantly screwing up formatting converting back and forth from iWork.

[guzzisport]

I'm probably a luddite, but at home I'm still using Word 5.1a and Excel 3.0. Both are very good applications. At work, I get the dubious joy of using Vista and the horrifying experience of using Word 2007. The new version of Excel is it has always been, a very good product. Word 2007 is a huge step backwards in terms of productivity. If Notepad could had the character replacement options for tabs and line returns, I'd hardly ever use Word. The Vista/Word experience makes me appreciate my Mac all that much more. I'm going to guess that experienced Word users will quail and flail at the new version when it hits the shelves next month. I guess I better hurry out and pick up a copy of Office 2004.

[Ronald_Schoedel]

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I guess I better hurry out and pick up a copy of Office 2004.

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Good idea! Every copy of Office 2004 (including Student/teacher version for $149) will entitle the purchaser to the Special Media Edition ($499 SRP) of Office 2008, via mail-in form plus $6.99 for shipping.
So, get 2004, then send in the form for 2008, and compare. At least if you buy now you get your choice of which version you will get to use, but once 2004 is gone, it's gone!

[trip1ex]

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With iWork '08 I finally feel like I personally no longer need Office. But I have found while using it the last five months or so, that constantly having to convert to Office format when sharing documents with coworkers (even other Mac users) was getting frustrating, and at times I have switched back to Office for certain documents that are very hard to keep consistent formatting on between the two apps.
I would love to get rid of Office myself, but it's still sometimes easier to just use it than constantly screwing up formatting converting back and forth from iWork.

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That's why MS has a lock on office productivity software and why I need Office as a backup at least.

[MacTel]

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Now, I like iWork. I have even removed MS Oriface apps from my Dock and set all existing and future Word docs to open in Pages. Numbers opened up a PC generated spreadsheet for me the other day with no problems. The day for removing MSO altogether in near, in my little corner of the world.
So, when do I get iWork for my iPhone? Just wondering.

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I'm sold. I'm getting it with my new MacBook. That would be nice to have iWork for the iPhone so that gives me more of a reason to get an iPhone. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[spiderbat]

I've been totally m$-free since many, many years, both for practical and ethical reasons, but I don't believe that the present incarnation of iWork will affect the predominance of the infamous "office" suite in a significant way. Such an juggernaut cannot be defeated in a short term and one must also admit that there are a lot of things that "office" can do, however in an abominable way, and iWork simply cannot.
Presently, the only app of the iWork bundle I use with some frequency is Keynote; I do any serious typesetting work with old plain TeX (no latex!) and my moderate needs of spreadsheet computing are more than fulfilled by AppleWorks. My big gripe about the iWork components is the lack of AppleScript support in Numbers: juggling data between AppleWorks and FileMaker Pro via AS is a must for me.
But I'm confident that this will be set straight in a future version: implementing AS in a Cocoa application - as Numbers is - is such a breeze that it becomes a temptation for the developer!
Anyway, iWork will save some souls from a dependency on the muddy side of computing, and that's very good! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[pcharles]

I loved Word 5.1a! This was the version of office I wrote my PhD Dissertation/Thesis on, on a Mac LCII. I could fit the whole 200 page dissertation and the data files on a couple of 3 inch floppy disks. I think that still rates as the finest version of office to date. Sure, MS has added and changed features, but I do not believe things have significantly improved. In fact, in the field of long documents, such as the thesis or dissertation, Microsoft's switch to master documents from the linked documents of version 5.1a has been a sever step backwards.
Like I said, there is pretty much nothing I use in the new version of office, or in Pages, that was not in version 5.1a. Trouble is that it probably does not run on Leopard.