It's also easier for corporate IT to accepts Macs when you can say, "yes, we use Word, we use Excel, we have an Exchange solution". I actually wish MS would ditch Entourage and release Outlook for the Mac again.

If I had a small company or didn't have to rely on parity with Windows clients, I'd use iWork.

who needs that?? Writers getting paid BY THE WORD.

At home I use iWork. At work, I use MS Suite becasue of the mix platform enviroment. iWork should rename iWork@Home.... or simply iHome. YouHome? Yes, iHome.

If Mossbert is going to compare prices, he needs to compare like prices. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The lower education price for iWork 08 is $39 (for institutional purchase). Less than 1/3 of the lowest price for Office.

Office Student and Teacher edition has very few purchase and use restrictions than iWork's Educational version. Average Joe User who is buying for his home is entitled to purchase Office S/T, but is not entitled to buy iWork unless he is a teacher or a post-secondary student (or can get one of the above to buy it for him, in which case they both are violating the license).

Mossberg's price comparison is about as accurate as you can get for home users, and businesses are not going to be buying iWork.

Also, the missing functions are largely ones that most users never need, so unless you're a heavy Excel user with all sorts of complicated equations and macros, Numbers should be able to fill the spot nicely.

Mossberg was only referring to built-in functions, not any functions that relate to "heavy" Excel use and statistical/financial calculations that are included in add-ins such as the analysis toolpak. These are the power functions that people doing "light" statistical work will need, which iWork has no provision for (can you make iWork calculate a single-variable regression line?)

"Heavy" Excel users won't even be using the built-in functions as they are even too few (ie, multiple regression calculation and monte-carlo risk analysis all require external add-ins) and are completely out of the question with iWork.

I've asked this before, but does Numbers even do Goal-seek or Solver modelling? This isn't "heavy" Excel and is used quite frequently by people doing more than a home budget.

I also agree with others that separate apps are often better, especially since Mail can see your Address Book entries and so can iCal, so I don't see the point of making them all one giant app like Entourage. If Mail.app had better support for Exchange, I'd be using it over Entourage right now at work.

It depends on usage, and whether the users are even aware of what they can do. Outlook really requires Exchange to take advantage of what it can do over and above a calendar and email app separately these days. However when an Exchange server is present, the only app available on a Mac that can come close is Lotus Notes, and even IT is sorely lacking compared to Outlook/Exchange on Windows.

I used to use Now Softwares Now Up to Date and Now Contact instead of Apple Address Book and iCal- it was a pretty good time management- integrated solution. But, when it wouldn't sync with my iPhone (which still can't search contacts) I had to switch over to the Apple supplied tools- and, I agree with Mossberg- Apple needs a better solution. However, the price comparison- is crazy. I've not upgraded our Office- because of the crazy expense. Face it- Excel and Word haven't changed that much- and PowerPoint is turdware. At least with Apple applications- I haven't ever been hit with a virus.

Mossberg has it backwards and falls into the same trap as a lot of others. It's the operating system's job to tie apps together. Apps like outlook that combine calender, address book and mail are wrong for a lot of reasons. Back in pre Mac OS X times, Apple had interapplication communication and publish & subscribe. Windows didn't have that. That's why Outlook was created, to allow integration of the three apps. Mossberg probably doesn't know that Mac OS X's iCal, Address Book and Mail work very well together, using standards such as vCal and vCards.

. Back in pre Mac OS X times, Apple had interapplication communication and publish & subscribe. Windows didn't have that.

publish and subscribe just sucked as an idea and in implementation. It was clunky and irritating slow (if it worked). IAC never really amounted to much (I don't recall too many programs that worked with each other) until it got working with Applescript.

And Windows had OLE (which became ActiveX).

But integration or separate is one of those things that fluctuate. Don't be surprised if in the next couple of years Apple decides to make an 'outlook' app merging all these pieces.

Mossberg has it backwards and falls into the same trap as a lot of others. It's the operating system's job to tie apps together.

No, its not. Its the job of the software to do this. The only job the OS should be handling is the communication, but the actual implementation is the requirement of the Mail/AddressBook/calendar programs.

But the main reason to want separate programs vs. an integrated solution is so that you could mix and match your pieces (same with a stereo system, for example). Can you do this with Apple's apps? Do they have their APIs published so I can use my own address book with Mail, vs. needing to store it in Apple's Address Book? Can I use iCal with Thunderbird? Or Mail with Mozilla's calendar (whatever that is)?

Of course, we are talking Apple, so anything is possible. These are the people who decided that to set up your default browser or mail app requires you to launch Safari or mail.app and set that up, regardless of whether that's the app you want to use.

Average Joe User who is buying for his home is NOT entitled to purchase Office S/T, it's just sellers look the other way when he wants to buy it. So does Apple when purchasing online.

Office for Mac Student and Teacher Edition

Qualified Educational-User Qualifications A. FULL OR PART-TIME STUDENT B. HOME-SCHOOLED STUDENT C. FULL OR PART-TIME FACULTY OR STAFF OF AN ACCREDITED EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

No, iCal does not do calendar sharing. It lets you post read-only calendars for others to view, but you can't edit them and there are no groupware featues.

Leopard's iCal is a different story, but that's not here today.

That said, Outlook is a bloated, inelegant, and difficult to use. I'll take Apple's separate apps any day. I don't see this as a disadvantage.

Of all the things to talk about wrt to iwork vs office, holding up outlook as a model is such a joke. That program is the biggest POS I've ever used. Yes, it does some powerful things, but overall, it's like having teeth pulled.

iwork vs office: pages vs word: pages is a page layout program. imho, it's awesome for doing fliers, medium for doing papers (endnote support?). word sucks, but its so bloated it does everything.

keynote vs powerpoint: keynote destroys powerpoint.

numbers vs excel: excel is kludgy but it does a h*** of a lot, and its crappy interface can be learned. not being able to do statistics means numbers is basically useless to me.

For me, iwork 06 was worth it, but upgrading? Doubtful.

We don't want Entourage. That's why I use a mac. Bloatware is so last century....

Average Joe User who is buying for his home is NOT entitled to purchase Office S/T, it's just sellers look the other way when he wants to buy it. So does Apple when purchasing online.

So.. why do those same resellers and Apple online not look the other way when it comes to Adobe/Macromedia software, iWork, or the other multitudes of educational software that are available through those resellers?

Could it be that Microsoft is the party that's looking the other way? Before you answer, keep in mind that I already know the answer - I've been an authorized educational reseller of Apple software for nearly a decade.

http://us1.trymicrosoftoffice.com/product.aspx?re_ms=oo&family=officehomestudent&culture=en-US

It's called "Home and Student" now... and there are no restrictions. Just can't use it in a corporate environment.

You mean iWork doesn't replace a huge institutional program that is 5 times it's price.... News Flash, iphoto doesn't replace photoshop.

In case you want to try an all in one solution that is Mac like, native and not bloated, try Contactizer Pro (http://www.objective-decision.com)

It is $119 and syncs with Mail, AddressBook, iCal and does much more...

I'm developing this product.

Word Count? who needs that?? Writers getting paid BY THE WORD.

Or a staff reporter told there's a hole of a certain size for his/her story; a freelance writer doing a piece for a magazine with a set size for a feature; a student assigned to write a report of a certain length. I've been a journalist all my life--freelance exclusively for almost ten years, and frequently writing for other pubs while working full-time for one, and i've found Word's word count feature very useful. It becomes instinctive to use it as a guide the way a golfer uses distance-to-pin to help select his/her clubs.

"Back in pre Mac OS X times, Apple had interapplication communication and publish & subscribe. Windows didn't have that."

Boy, and you wonder why some PC users have a prejudice against Macs. If Mac users spout untruths about PCs, how is any PC user going to believe what they say about Macs being better?

Back when Publish and Subscribe existed, most Mac apps that were cross-platform said "You can use Publish and Subscribe on the Mac or OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) in Windows.

And Apple's implementation was arguably worse. It was deeply flawed and never as widely used as OLE, even proportional to its market size.

It is an excellent little cheap office suite. Offers a quite good compatibility with MS Office and remains powerful enough for a lot of jobs, with an interface really more intuitive, simple and easy-to-use than OpenOffice.

But this 3rd version is still lacking of good support with RTL languages wich is a pitty since TextEdit and almost all Cocoa softwares support them quite well. Also it is a pity because it as better support of MS Word and better desktop publishing functions than Mellel.