I just got a Mac & opted for pages rather than word. I sent an email with an attached doc I had saved as a word doc but when I picked it up on a PC it was not consistent with what I had in pages.
Is this normal, or have I done something wrong, do people use pages or would I be better with word?

I have not tried numbers/excel yet, good or bad move?

Use NeoOffice instead if you want to avoid Word. I bit the bullet and went for M$ just for familiarity.

Pages doesn’t import placed images and does away with most of the formatting in charts etc. I only use to open up copy so I can paste it into InDesign. Anything else and its a bit of a fail. If you want to use it for much more you need to get Office really.

Aren’t macs great though? 🙂

I’ve not used Pages enough to really decide if it’s better than Word. I do prefer Numbers to Excel though. Both have similar capabilities but Numbers is laid out nicely and I prefer the way you have individual tables/elements etc. rather than a sheet-by-sheet document as in Excel.

I’ve never had any trouble with documents going between Numbers and Excel or Mac/PC, though.

Pages is so much nicer to use, as is Numbers instead of Excel. I hate Excel. Nasty application. Was obviously designed by someone who doesn’t like other people.

If you were only using Macs, I’d say use Pages. I’ve not had many probs with opening stuff in Word later though. But I don’t know how it would fare in a demanding professional environment. 🙂

On a similar matter, someone sent me a word perfect file the other day. I didnt realise it was still in use.