[X-Newbies] Re: Office Suite Conundrum

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 2:33 AM +1100 3/25/05, Tony Johansen wrote:
>I hear many good things about the new iWork and am looking forward 
>to trying it out. From all reports it will more than satisfy 
>Microsoft Office users

iWork consists of two applications: Pages and Keynote. Pages is a 
PageMaker-lite type of page layout and word processing app while 
Keynote is a presentation app. The combination, in my opinion, is 
useful and applicable to the needs of many users for whom an office 
suite is overkill. But (again in my opinion) it is no substitute 
whatsoever for an office suite. For an MS Office user in a department 
or otherwise sharing WP files, an individual working with any degree 
of collaboration on documents, anyone with spreadsheet needs, or 
users having need for more word processing/admin-assistant 
capabilities than layout, the iWork product is inadequate. More to 
the point, anyone finding the Office-compatibles (neo, OOo et al) to 
be insufficient in comparison to MS Office should simply look 
elsewhere.

iWork is an very good product but doesn't seem to target users who 
would be well-served by MS Office. Instead it appears to be aimed at 
the very large base of users for whom MS Office is overkill or 
inappropriate.
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]