I strongly suggest Open Office. It is compatible with MS Office formats plus a few more that MS Office can't handle. It is also a free download, which is good news for a college student. And it is cross platform, so it will run on any computer OS. It has a spreadsheet package and slide presentation package as well. However the program that, IMO, is the best for formatting documents is TeX/LaTeX. The presentation and layout is gorgeous. Word and other word processor output look ugly, amateurish and clunky in comparison. LaTeX is also free.
chris_nauta
2008-09-18 20:02:58 UTC
iWork works better as a package and as a piece of software, so do most other Office program packages apart from M$ Office. However, 98% of the world works with M$ Office , so I would suggest getting that program so that you can be like the rest of us lol :)
Carling
2008-09-18 20:21:20 UTC
for a student why buy when you can have better for free.
open office 2 will run on a mac. and it is just as good if not better than both your choices...
Open Office will read and save in any file format it as the same features as MS Office but with different program names you can download it and install it on as many systems as you like.
check out the professional document templates also
download it from the link below
BTW there are loads of free Linux professional software packages for the mac but Apple will not tell you about them... they want your money
before you get the mac I would look into a normal laptop and have linux installed on it go to youtube.com and search for linux vs os/x linux vs Vista.. OS/x on a PC
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