iWork 08: Numbers

[randomlinh]

I hate Office for OS X... with a passion. Luckily I get it cheap from work, but I wanted to give iWork a shot since they have Numbers now.

It's definitely very clean looking, and I like that. But at the same time, things like popping in and out of layout mode (the mode where you can move stuff around to make it pretty) is annoying. I guess because I'm used to the entire thing being cells.

I also think it would have helped if they could have captured a lot of the excel keyboard shortcuts, especially from the windows world, heh.

What are your thoughts? $80 seems dirt cheap compared to office for general use. Doesn't have all the power of MS office, but at home, I don't need that.

Altho, I really wish Open Office was native.. and had a better interface. I'd just use that, heh.

 

[bearxor]

Never been a fan of iWork/Appleworks. Never been a fan of Office 2004 or OOo for OS X either.

My solution has been to use an old copy of XP, install Parallels and use Office 2007. I don't like using parallels for my boot camp partition so using XP keeps it pretty small and light but you could also get away with a Windows 2000 + Office 2003 install.

 

[TheStu]

I haven't run into too many issues with it. I am running it on the Leopard Beta and have noticed some sluggishness and weird issues with Spaces, but other than that I am very happy with it considering all that I have to do.

 

[keeleysam]

It's great for home users, but not for power users. I still feel that iWork should be called "Keynote with a couple beta apps we have been tooling around with for the past couple months".

I use Excel 2003 in Crossover Mac.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: bearxor
Never been a fan of iWork/Appleworks. Never been a fan of Office 2004 or OOo for OS X either.

My solution has been to use an old copy of XP, install Parallels and use Office 2007. I don't like using parallels for my boot camp partition so using XP keeps it pretty small and light but you could also get away with a Windows 2000 + Office 2003 install.

Out of curiousity, why don't you like using parallels and boot camp? I'm somewhat contemplating doing the same, it's just a bit taxing on my iMac IMO. I make do w/ Office 2004.

Originally posted by: keeleysam
It's great for home users, but not for power users. I still feel that iWork should be called "Keynote with a couple beta apps we have been tooling around with for the past couple months".

I use Excel 2003 in Crossover Mac.

If it were cheaper, I might give it a shot. I failed at getting wine to work right, heh.

 

[bearxor]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: bearxor
Never been a fan of iWork/Appleworks. Never been a fan of Office 2004 or OOo for OS X either.

My solution has been to use an old copy of XP, install Parallels and use Office 2007. I don't like using parallels for my boot camp partition so using XP keeps it pretty small and light but you could also get away with a Windows 2000 + Office 2003 install.

Out of curiousity, why don't you like using parallels and boot camp? I'm somewhat contemplating doing the same, it's just a bit taxing on my iMac IMO. I make do w/ Office 2004.

It's just never FELT right to me. It works, but its more sluggish than a stand-alone virtual machine. Also, I feel like I have some driver and preference issues with going back and forth between running it in a VM and running it natively. Also, I've had it happen where Parallels will crash and all of the sudden Windows is non-bootable natively. It boots fine again in parallels but blue screens any time I try to start it on its own. That's happened a few times actually.

In the end, I keep my Vista partition for gaming and a WindowsXP VM for work. Also, WindowsXP runs great in a VM with only 512MB of RAM. That leaves 1.5 free for OS X . I've ran Vista ina VM and it's just too processor intensive to run side-by-side with OS X at this point.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: bearxor
It's just never FELT right to me. It works, but its more sluggish than a stand-alone virtual machine. Also, I feel like I have some driver and preference issues with going back and forth between running it in a VM and running it natively. Also, I've had it happen where Parallels will crash and all of the sudden Windows is non-bootable natively. It boots fine again in parallels but blue screens any time I try to start it on its own. That's happened a few times actually.

In the end, I keep my Vista partition for gaming and a WindowsXP VM for work. Also, WindowsXP runs great in a VM with only 512MB of RAM. That leaves 1.5 free for OS X . I've ran Vista ina VM and it's just too processor intensive to run side-by-side with OS X at this point.

Interesting points. I don't want to lose the space, heh. But I did just have parallels crash very baddly and knock out my ability to use DHCP.. or it was just coincidental, I have no clue.

I take it you do all this on your macbook pro in your sig? even at 512, it seems processor intensive enough to give the OS X side some slow downs. Did you upgrade to Parallels 3.0 yet or still on 2.x?

 

[bearxor]

Yes, the MBP is my only Mac. I've not noticed any slowdowns on the OS X side of things. That may change with 10.5. MBP's shipped with 1GB of RAM until this summer when they started shipping with 2GB in anticipation of 10.5, so maybe I'll miss that 512MB at some point. I run XP full-time in OS X. I keep the start menu hidden at the bottom and have my dock on the right, where I prefer it anyways.

I'm rolling with 3.0 right now, though I'm probably going to ditch it and switch to VMWare. Fusion is much nicer than parallels. Just more refined. Less features though.

 

[TheStu]

I've got 1GB RAM in my MacBook and was running XP Pro with 384MB RAM in a VM using Fusion up until I switched to the Leopard Beta.

I have found that 1GB is sufficient for Leopard but I havent tried running a VM yet. My buddy told me that Parallels 3 completely destroyed his Leopard Beta install, so I think I may wait to try it until I hear from him that VMWare works with it.

 

[randomlinh]

hrmm... maybe i should make the switch to fusion.... heh

 

[TheStu]

Back when I was running Tiger, I loved Fusion. It ran better and smoother than Parallels, and used fewer resources. When I am ready to VM again, I think I will be buying Fusion, they won my money.