Review by Photoguy

Using this program makes my iMac (core 2 duo, with default 1 gig memory) run REALLY slowly, usually making the program almost unusable. [Contrast this to iWork (a small fraction of the price, by the way) which opens much more quickly and runs super smoothly.] Office has also crashed on me a few times (I’m running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11. Maybe its more stable on Leopard?).

I also don’t understand why people get this because they need Office compatibility. I opened a document from Word 2003, and in Pages it looked like the original, but in Word 2008 the margins were different and words showed up on different lines.

The program looks nice with its blue glass, but to tell you the truth, iWork looks more elegant and has its good looks without sacrificing intuitive use. I mean, in iWork you can have the text formatting toolbar always show, but in Office you always have to choose between one kind of toolbar set or another (in a side-window). For people used to using Office 2003 on Windows (like me), you’ll actually feel less at home in Office 2008 than in other programs (like iWork or even the simple OpenOffice.org).

I have Office 2008 and iWork, and while I can highly recommend iWork, I keep the Office icons out of the Dock. I even find myself opening Word documents in Pages more often than in Word because its just more reliable and it loads the documents just fine. Save yourself the time and money, and don’t get this program.