IWork vs Microsoft Office For Mac

I am a university student and just bought the MBP 2.53 and i was curious of which i should get. iWork 08 or Office for Mac. Any opinoins?

I have several Macs in my household and because I have a 13 yr old daughter with a MacBook, I purchased iWork. I also own Mac Office which I upgraded to 2008 the week it came out.
I thought that I could stop using MS Office for my work-related stuff, but after using iWork for a while, I went back to MS Office 2008. The formatting conversion in iWork is not reliable. More importantly, If you work in the real world and have to share files with colleagues, Office rules, unfortunately. It's just not worth the incompatibility hassles to use iWork instead of Office.
Even my daughter has given up on iWork because of compatibility issues with her school which has only PC's available to students. This is going to change next year when she starts high school at a private Catholic school. This school uses Macs, but they still require MS Office.
For a single user looking to get a nice work package affordably, I think that iWork is a great value and much nicer to use than Office. But that's about it until iWork develops further into a real business package.
BTW, if you are a student or have a student in your household, I suggest that you check out the steep software discounts for students at www.academicsuperstore.com. You can purchase the student version of MS Mac Office 2008 for $159, and it includes licenses for 3 computers! The student version is the same as the full retail version except that MS does not allow upgrades on the student version to the next generation of Office, whenever that becomes available. Other than that, it's the same product that you can spend $350 for a single-user license.
Cheers.
Bud
Message was edited by: budjames

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