Do I really need Office X ???? Apple Works okay???

[Leonis]

Well....I have been thinking about this question for over a week already.

As some people here already know that I only deal with graphics and video related stuff and don't bother touching "business" stuff.

I have Office 98 (got it from a big clearence sales) and am using it just to type resume and receive guidelines from people. If people send me a complex or new word format I usually tell them to save the file as an older word file or just the RTF files......

Now moving to OSX......I really don't want to deal with Classic. I already paid a big chunk of money on my OSX compliant 3D apps....and once Illustrator, Photoshop, AfterEffects go native all my remaining cash will be going for the upgrade and I will have nothing left for the Office X upgrade.

I am wondering.....will Apple Works do the trick? I have Apple Works which is bundled with my dad's iMac and I can grab it from him. But I am not too sure how compatible this app with all those WORD documents (especially to those WORD documents with "fancy" layers and text boxes).

Any idea????

Thanks

[AdmiralAK]

If what you have works for you and you dont feel any need for the "updates" then dont get it

It costs A LOT! (well for what it does )


I am keeping with what I have till my dept gets a site licence


Admiral

[Leonis]

My only concern still is Classic......

[AdmiralAK]

Well teh way I think about it is this:
Office 98, or 2000 works well for me now, it does what I want it to do. I do not need anything special that office X will gimme, if it has something special.

By the time I DO need a replacement for office 98 it will be high time to get an OS X version, in which case the purchase is justifieable. Furthermore classic in the future will be a once in a while occurance, if at all, because all apps will be X native. Now I use classic everyday when I use X just because 90% of my apps are classic.

[RacerX]

Actually AppleWorks should be able to read and write most Office docs (specially Office 97 format if it is coming from a Windows system). I do have a copy of Office 98, but only use it on a few occations.

But this brings up an important point though. Why do we have to pay so much money for apps just to read docs from them? Why pay $900 for QuarkXPress if you don't actually create anything in it? Or $500 for Office v.X to read Word or PowerPoint docs from Windows users when you don't make docs in them yourself.

I think any app that cost over $50 should have to follow the "Acrobat" model. That is to say, there should be a free reader for people who don't create with that app. I have paid for the full version of Acrobat, and the upgrades from 3 to 4, and soon 4 to 5 (when it is Mac OS X compatible), because I use it to create documents. But why should I have to pay for Illustrator, Freehand, QuarkXPress, CorelDRAW (though they now have a free LE version), and others, just to read documents sent to me from other people.

In the last two years I have gotten 1, and only 1 PowerPoint doc sent to me. 5 Word docs that I couldn't open with my favorite Word version, 5.1a. And a couple Excel spreedsheets in all that time. It was NOT worth $500 to me just to be able to open and print or read those docs.

Anyway, AppleWorks 6.2.1 works great for most everything I need it for, and if you need to buy the full version of 6 (if you can only get 5 from your Dad), it is running between $50 and $75 these days. Any version of 6 can be upgraded to 6.2.1 and run native on Mac OS X.

[chemistry_geek]

If I'm not mistaken, Office 98 and Office 2001 for Macintosh data file formats are identical. The only difference between the two office suites are features/interface changes. I have both suites and I use Office 2001 very frequently, especially M$ Word and M$ Excel. Being a chemist who must work with reports and data manipulation, I am sort of forced to use M$ products since "the world" uses these products for the most part. Excel provides some quick and dirty data manipulation due to its features, but there are serious limits to the accuracy of Excel. It is forbidden for use by the pharmaceutical industry for any calculations because of its limited computational accuracy. It uses some shortcuts with linear algebra when computing least-squares and a few others that I won't mention. Excel is business software, so, basically the first two decimal places of any number are accurate but anything else after those can be junk, you never know what is accurate and what isn't.

If you don't use M$ Office very often, or just use it for compatibility with the Windoze world, I would recommend not upgrading unless you absolutely MUST upgrade. I don't intend on upgrading unless I'm forced to upgrade. Why give M$ more $$$ for a program you already have. The features certainly aren't going to change appreciably, and .NET is supposed to be around the corner anyway. Big deal if it takes you an extra 2 minutes to load Classic, go get some coffee or a snack and come back to the computer.

chemistry_geek

[AdmiralAK]

My sentiments exactly
When you install windoze (well at least in the past this held true) a word and excel viewer were included... this should be done for the mac too, as well as powerpoint.

The last time I created a powerpoint presentation: 4 years ago

Last time I used excel (for non-work matter @ home): 1 year ago (and this was to help a friend...well to do her homework lol )

Last Time I used excel at work: Last week (but since I dont pay for it no prob)

Last time I used Access (on a PC): Last year when I did that HW for a friend

Last time I used M$ word (at home): 1 month ago.

So I have no serious need to upgrade from what I am currently using and probably wont feel the need to upgrade anyhow.

$500 is quite A LOT of money to just throw away.. I would prefer to buy something constructive, or something that apeases my hobbying interests than give it to M$.



Admiral

[karavite]

I got by for years with ClarisWorks - in fact I preferred it well over Office. When they changed the name to AppleWorks I stuck with it for a while. I think as a suite, AppleWorks is far more "seamlessly intergrated" (the most over used and now meaningless term in computing) than Office ever was or will be.

AppleWorks should allow you to save your resume as a Word file (probably rtf is best) so those who you want to hire you will be able to read your stellar resume. However, there still are some funky format and font size issues between Mac and PC. I did my resume in Word 2000 for Mac, but the page breaks were different on the PC Word version of the file. I didn't do anything fancy (times new roman, 1 " margins...) and it was a little embarrassing, so although you really shouldn't have to do this kind of crap, preview any important docs on a PC before you send them away.

By the way, I had AppleWorks but it crashed constantly on OS 9 - now I can't find the darn CD so I can upgrade to the OSX version!!! It's here somewhere!