Hi I am upgrading to the new MacBook Pro 13inch. I am trying to decide whetherr to get the MS Office for Mac 2011 or iWork 09. Does anyone have any recommendations? Cheers

Question

As per title above

Answer 1

Choose if:
MS OfficeMac - $$
If you need to keep your Office skills up to remain employable and/or exchanging some files with Windows Office users.
99% of the business world uses Office on Windows PC's. Copy protected.
If you are constantly exchanging files with Windows users, it's better to use Windows because of formatting and slight differences between the Win Office and OfficeMac versions, fonts etc. You can then choose to install Windows onto your Mac in a virtual machine program, then run Win Office in that, BootCamp or just get a Windows PC and Office.
Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?
iWork -$$
If you plan to remain totally in the limited 6% Mac market share  environment with little file exchange options with Windows/Linux users. Copy protected.
LibreOffice - free
A donationware suite of office programs like Office that accepts Office files, cross platform (Linux, OS X and Windows) that offers maximum compatibility, only fonts and formatting could be thrown off a little between platforms. Not copy protected, open source software.
If you wish to be able to open and access dam near anything from Windows users without paying for OfficeMac, don't need 100% or near 100% compatibility with Windows Office, then this is a excellent choice.
If you ever should need to send a LibreOffice file to someone else to edit or alter, you can also send the appropriate OS copy of the installer package and it will cost them nothing to use.