Macs have software?!

>.<

Just joking guys!

I know there's "my first word processor" and "my first media player".

Amongst others. I'm fairly sure that's what the "i" means.

We have proper software...

No Ben, don't get into that again...

Listen, Angelic, have your fun - and I know you think it's just fun. But if you insist I will lock and delete.

It's okay, i'll stop now. It really is some harmless banter, but if anyone takes actual offense I apologise.

On that note i've been looking into getting a Mac for a couple of months now >.<

I know, and none taken on my part.

I think we're all a bit caught up in the exuberance of this new place to come and play. I'm loving it. Don't know about you!

This is very very true, I love it!

And i'm going to get busy helping out by trying to design a new logo =)

Wish I had a Mac now, for their image manipulation software

Well, I actually DO use Pages and Numbers, Apple’s equivalent to Word and Excel. I really think that Word is very over specced for my use - I’d use about 25% of it’s features. That’s not because I find it hard, or complex - but because my needs for word processing is very small. Ditto for spreadsheets. iWork, being the bundle from Apple which includes both these packages for under £70 really is value for money. Word on it’s own would set me back £198 (Amazon price). Office is £350 (Amazon again). If I bought the Microsoft packaged, I’d be wasting my money.

I spend my money on the graphics apps instead. That’s where the smart money goes in this house.

Which makes you think, most home users will buy MS Office because they use it at work, or their kids use it at school, but the probably don't need everything that is included...How many home users use the revision tool in Word? Or use pivot tables in Excel? How many put together databases in Access? Or have a real need for PowerPoint? For it's price it is a great package, but a potential waste of money if you don't use it.

I bought iWork for Keynote, I find Pages and Numbers a little too simple and Numbers has been unstable when working with large amounts of data (I think I chucked 234936 rows in, each with three columns, it didn't like it...), having said that, Keynote is head and shoulders above PowerPoint of OpenOffice's Presenter.

For most things TextEdit does well, I use it to take notes at uni, for anything more serious I tend to use OpenOffice or dig out TeXShop for LaTeX.

Don't forget that, if it's for home use only and you don't need Exchange support, you should be able to buy the Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition, which gives you enough licences to install on 3 Macs - current Amazon price is £87.40 with free delivery - SEE HERE

If I’m working with text, I just use BBEdit, which is a text editor. Anything DTP layout wise is handled in InDesign. If I need to bang out a letter, or do some light design work (esp for a company I work for where the heavy weight software isn’t available), I use Pages.

I have iWork, but I think I would prefer Word over Pages, although Numbers is about equal with Excel in terms of what I use it for (I use other apps for serious number crunching). Keynote is the deal-breaker for me, along with the fact i use \LaTeX for producing most documents for uni, and InDesign for anything poster-y, which is rare.

Edd

I find Word to be a shockingly poor word processor, crippled by feature bloat.

Excel on the other hand is wonderful. The undisputed king of spreadsheets and the only tool I would consider at the moment for anything with large numbers of rows or columns. It is well worth the price of Office for this application on it's own. The Mac version seems nicer to use than the PC version too.

Same here.

It's hard work just to use it. Things aren't where you want to find them, it's ugly, and looks old and out of date.

I much prefer Pages, which is far cleaner and less bloated. I find it a joy to use.

Got myself Office Ultimate Edition for about £39 from the microsoft website.

It's a bit of a giveaway, but you've got to have a university email address