“In the workplace, Microsoft Office is as inevitable as drawn-out meetings and bad coffee. But Microsoft’s combination of Word, Excel and PowerPoint is not the only way to write, crunch numbers or prepare slideshows. And for home users, it isn’t even the best way anymore,” Rob Pegoraro reports for The Washington Post.
“Two of these Office alternatives are free Web sites that you can use in any new browser: Google Documents and Zoho Office,” Pegoraro reports. “The other, Apple’s $79, Mac-only iWork ’08, is a traditional program that incorporates some refreshing changes to the standard productivity bundle.”
“Apple’s iWork ’08 outdoes Microsoft Office most notably by helping you make more use of the information already on your computer,” Pegoraro reports. “Apple has also made these features easier to discover than the tools in Microsoft Office…”
“iWork’s Numbers program is the most fascinating part of this bundle. There hasn’t been a new spreadsheet program in years, much less one that could be described as ‘fascinating.’ Numbers ditches the traditional, intimidating graph-paper look and instead invites you to mix multiple tables, slick 3-D charts and graphics on a single page,” Pegoraro reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Whit” for the heads up.]