IWork 09 vs MS/Office

I have both iWork 09 and MS/Office on my MacBook Pro.  I am a technical author and make extensive use of spreadsheets, manuscript word processing documents (i.e. books and articles), as well as presentations that must be powerpoint compatible.
I am extremely frustrated with iWorks '09.  I would love to use these products exclusively and get rid of my Microsoft Office, but it doesn't seem like this can happen.
There are many features in iWorks that I like, such as Pages layout capabilities.  I am however extremely frustrated with both Pages word processing cabilities, and Numbers page layout capabilities or lack thereof.  Just today I wanted to print a simple spreadsheet which is a list of names and addresses, with email and telephone numbers.  I could not fit this list on an 8 1/2 inch piece of paper in landscape.  It took me less than a minute to import the sheet into MS/Office and print a beautiful page.
In Pages, I was trying to write a book and wanted a table of contents along with various headings and chapter titles, etc. throughout the book, footnotes, etc.  I'm sure that Pages supports all these features but I darn sure can't find them! 
Then little thing like fancy fonts...  In Microsoft Office, I can create 3D fonts, with all sorts of textures, 3D effects, etc. producing amazing fonts.  The best I seem to be able to do in Pages or Keynote is add a shadow or reflection. 
Have I just overlooked some critical resources to help me learn to use these products or are they really as inferior to MS/Office as they seem to be?  I am terribly frustrated and greatly disappointed in Apple!
Documentation *****, the movie based tutorials are so freaking basic that it is a wonder they exist.  Show me how to layout a sophisticated book or report.  Show me how to build a sophisticated business presentation.  What about things like importing a table from a web page into a spreadsheet? 
I'm really sorry to be so negative, but these products seem like a total waste of time and money and that I need to continue to use Microsoft Office which BTW lack at least 25% of the features they support on the PC! 
I love my MAC, don't force me back tot he PC!

To ask Apple for new features in Pages and other iWork apps, go here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
But I don't think it is realistic to imagine that Pages will ever be able to always replace Word -- it's not intended to do that, is a whole lot cheaper, and has not been updated now for a long time.  Whether someone can do without Word depends on the features they require for their work and the level of compatibility they have to have with others using MS Office.  In your case I would recommend staying with Office.  After 10 years Mac Office is still behind Windows Office in various ways, so if only Windows Office does what you require, then you should run Windows on your Mac or use a PC. 

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    Message was edited by: Rick Mansfield
    Message was edited by: Rick Mansfield

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