I still use Office on my Mac because I can. I also don't know if iWork is compatible with new and older versions of Word, Excel, etc.. I never use Outlook because it is such a pain to learn. I had to use it at my old corporate job, and I did get used to it over time. I think all who don't switch have familiarity with Office, or some part of it, in common and don't see a need to learn something new. I think Apple also needs to better market their iWork product to highlight compatibility if in fact it exists.

As a new Mac user after a career on PC only, I can sympathize with your dad about the change. It is frustrating on many fronts, mainly because of Apple's insistence on changing the nomenclature of just about every facet of computing work. Directories became folders and everything else became something new, also.

My wish is that MacWorld would wean itself away from almost only stories that might produce an ad for them. Both OpenOffice and StarOffice -- free software that runs identically on Mac or PC -- should be given equal footing in that magazine. Why should any serious computer user want to hear yet another story about the Mac/PC combat? Or Hillary berating Obama?

What we need is a steady outlook AT THE TASKS INVOLVED and the best way to get the work done.

Mac has enough problems these days with getting Leopard to work -- without reference here to the added problems of living with the two updates, so far! I'm going to be very slow to purchase any software from Apple until it cleans up the OSX mess and very little about that is in MacWorld or MacLife or online at Apple tech support!

Need a place to start, Mr. Editor? Time Machine. The concept is both elegant and valuable but details on how to best configure it for varying purposes is totally missing. My 500gb drive bought from AppleStore in late November reports today that only 43gb is available though my Mac hard drive is merely 160gb. Something seems very wrong here but getting help from Apple on understanding that is impossible.

Thanks Dots! Excellent feedback! I'll probably try it!

With my limited experience, unless you have a lot of complex formatting, it won't change at all.

I do not own office. I do own Iwork 08, also iwork 06, also Appleworks (remember them?) and NeoOffice (a mac version of Open Office).

NeoOffice is adequate for basic things, sometimes I"ve encountered bugs (had a problem at one point with wintel people being able to read documents saved at pdf or word, but that seems to have been fixed. The spreadsheet (NeoCalc) is ok for basics, but I haven't tried graphing.

Haven't tried Numbers. The Pages program has neat templates, but can't find the ones I liked in 06. I'm not all that comfortable with pages, I find the formatiing controls difficult to master.

I did a slideshow in Keynote a while back, it works ok and it converts powerpoint fine.

I still make flyers from time-to-time in Appleworks, and I use the database application for mailing lists. I used to make post cards in Appleworks until I got Printshop.

I mostly use NeoOffice, altho if I need something really stylish, I'll resort to Pages. I'd use Pages more if I were more comfortable with it. (which I'm not).

Yes, but you may want to know that Microsoft has fairly recently dropped support of FrontPage extensions, the vital tools on web servers for many FrontPage functions. They simply stopped working unless -- in a few cases -- individual servers kept them available. Those, too, will soon be gone. I know of no other packages that were so easily used with good results for most purposes.

As for accounting, the world needs to be aware that QB is not really a professional 'ready-for-prime-time' package. In many of its functions, simply doesn't work. You might look in on Accutek.com for a system that runs on either PC or Mac, a vital need in many small businesses. QB has a Mac version but it likely has all the failings of the PC version that cost me a lot of money because it moved it's errors over to Peachtree when we finally realized what was going on. So it was input all that data again! Kid thee not!

Whether it's Apple's responsibility to 'get the software developed' is hard to define but maybe the code is a little hard to come by for developers. When Jobx put OSX up in Linux or Unix, whichever, it was a good thing to do but I don't know enough to even wonder whether that code is sufficiently "open" to be of use in building a professionally responsible accounting package. Then, too, what OSX 5 graphics software runs on your Mac with the level of reliability needed for the dollars and cents of the accounting world?

I am the only Mac user in my company. I have to use MS office to share files with my colleagues. I have one BIG GRIPE with Mac MS Office against PC MS office.
To date I have not found any BIG issue with the excel part of Mac MS office. I have small gripes but generally they are compatible.
In word and powerpoint vs iworks (or vice versa) I have BIG issues.
I can construct a Keynote or .ppt in the Mac and develop a great looking presentation with more transition effects in .ppt than are in Keynote iworks. Fact. But if I send my Mac version to a colleague on a PC you can guarantee that when you play the .ppt in presentation mode, first those great transition you get in the Mac version, all but disappear.
Secondly, graphs or inserts that you have shrunck to fit the .ppt slide in the Mac version and actually present great in the Mac version, all come out misplaced and words overlaid with one another in the PC version. Not good, I have loads of trouble with this. The way I get round this is download my Mac .ppt file to a USB go to a work PC, load it run the .ppt in presentation mode. The slides that come out with misplaced inserts and text, you can correct if you made the data in the .ppt. If you imported the data then you have to double click it, where you then get the original graph or spreadsheet or whatever document appear, and you simply click it and return to the .ppt and generally that fixes the problem. Then I can reload to my Mac, overwrite the original file, now I can send it to a PC colleague and it will still work great on my Mac and a PC. Yes you are correct, that means my work desk has my Mac on it and a work PC for these and other MS Mac compatible issues. I hate that as I fly the Apple flag often, but still have to cower sometimes to a PC.
What bugs me is they are both MS and they are not 100% compatible.
The same goes for the word on both systems, but you cant double click a section to correct it as you do in .ppt, you have to physically reposition or retype it.
From Pages I can make great documents, with bullets, pictures, graphs etc, but convert it to a .doc on a Mac, you may be OK at this stage, not always. Send this .doc to a PC and your screwed. Nothing lines up, most formatting is misplaced.
So if they could fix this or anyone knows how to fix this I would be a happy bunny.

That's my two cents worth of PC vs Mac MS office and iworks, Actually felt more like 100 cents worth.
Phil