Bought a Macbook Pro over the weekend and was going to buy MS Office for it, but all the reviews I read said it was terrible.

Does anyone use iWork as an office substitute? Do you like it?

Any other software suggestions?

first, go to openoffice.org and download Open Office, a free opensource MS Office simulator. It'll require installing X11 on your mac, which should be on your system install disc (reading the site's FAQ's will outline this pretty nicely.)

Use that, see if it'll suit your purposes, and if not, use it until you figure out what you want to buy.

I have no advice for you, but I will offer this simpsons clip from last nights show, steve mobbs, lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBw4eReUc9U

Oh man....I watched that last night and felt like a complete tool...

open office is fine, I support the theory's advice.

open office, thirded

I'll check it out tonight...thanks guys...

any other software suggestions?

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i like neooffice better ... it uses the same framework as open office i believe but it doesn't use an additional program (x11 or whatever the fuck that thing is) to run it.

and at work i actually do use the normal MS office products on a 5 year old machine that runs panther... they seem to work fine for me...i'd assume they'd work better on a new computer running leopard

office for mac isnt terrible, but ive never actually paid any money for it either. openoffice doesnt require x11 anymore, so its (kind of) natively now, although it still looks out of place among every other mac app. if you just need a word processor, try abiword.

quick question about neooffice...

I see it is based off of Open Office... so does it do document recovery the way Open Office does? My ass has been saved several times by power-outage whilst I was working in Open Office and it's automatic document recovery was amazing. I mean, in general NeoOffice sounds appealing... but I don't want to discover that it doesn't recover documents until some tragic occurrence, you know?

I'm starting classes for an MBA in January...need a bit more than that.

Open office man here, and I used it all through grad school, but the powerpoint replacement was a little too rudimentary. But it's free so what do you have to lose? Frankly I use google docs a lot too, especially for anything that the wife and I need to collaborate on.

I got Office for Mac for $10 from work (a university). So if you are going to start an MBA program you may want to see if that same discount is available at your school. It seems okay. Certainly worth 10 bucks.

I have a copy of Office for you for your MacBook. i just installed it last week and it works fine.

yes. I'll concur. When I bought my new PC it didn't come with office, and rather than go out and buy the suite, I dled this. Amazing. In a word, its better. Not only can it save to the Office format, but a ton of other word processing, spreadsheet, etc docs as well. Plus, its free.

I like the built in PDF maker.
I don't use my home printer unless it's an emergency. I usually make a pdf and print it out at work. I know there are plenty of free PDF makers out there, but this is nice that it is built right in to the suite.

I get a discount at work and a discount through school...neither of them knocked more than a few bucks off the price.

So far I'm preferring NeoOffice to Open Office. Of course, that is all of a half-day of use... but good stuff.

So I checked out Neo since you liked it, but it looks like it is Mac only.

I'm actually a big fan of pages. It's easier to you in my opinion once you get used to it than word et all.

i really like the iwork suite and if you search you can find a serial for it, even though thats cheating.

Why the hate for Office for the Mac? It runs find on this MBP. I mean, I didn't pay for it, but don't mind it...

i too got porked by jobs last week. power supply on my power mac dies. there is an extended warranty on power supplies on power macs that i don't qualify for because my machine doesn't fall in the serial # range that has the issue. so they tell me my issue is a coincidence and not at all related to their shitty power supplies that they had to extend warranties on.

thanks for that jobs you motherfucker. i have been buying shit for those assholes from almost 20 years. they were nice when they were broke. now they treat me like half a moron.

all my office programs randomly switch between my "spaces". Really annoying.