Word Processing Program on iMac?

[drmazziotti]

Hi Everyone I'm new here...

I am about to make the switch from a PC (Dell laptop, technically) to an iMac for home/personal use. I am trying to decide whether to purchase iWork and have it pre-installed on my iMac, or not. I have used Microsoft products my whole life, which means all of my archived word processing documents are .doc (MS Word) docs. I want to be able to access these, and edit them if I choose, on my iMac in the future.

I believe Pages allows you to open MS Word docs for the most part -- have you guys found this to be true? Or am I mistaken?

My real question is: does the iMac come with any kind of word processing program as a default program (other than the iWork suite), and if so, does this open .doc files? (I am thinking the answer to this is "no" but I figured I'd run it by all of you.)

Also related: If I find that Pages won't let me access and edit all of my old .doc files, I have plans to download Open Office... do any of you have experience w/ this free product?

And finally: Ideally I would *like* to move over to the iWork suite of programs for personal use, unless I hear a strong dis-recommendation for doing this. Even if Pages won't deal w/ my old files the way I want it to, do you think I should just go ahead and have iWork pre-installed right when I purchase the iMac? I am leaning in this direction, but part of me thinks it will be silly to have both iWork and Open Office on the same machine. Any thoughts on this scenario?

Any feedback on any of these questions is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
--Donna

[mmkerc]

TextEdit comes with the Mac and will open Word files (have not tried with anything other then letters or pure text document (no graphics)).

No problem using both Open Office, and iWork. I have both plus Office and have no problems with any.

iWork is a good suite of programs. It will take a little time to learn as it interacts different then word, but most people like it.

[mrcqm]

The iWork suite will handle most of what you want it to do, as you mention in your original post. iWork happens to be what I use for all of my document, spreadsheet, and presentation needs. I rarely need to send editable documents to others so I tend to simply send pdf files.

If you do end up using Open Office for some things, use NeoOffice. They took the Open Office code and adopted it specifically for the Mac – the end result is quite nice.

[chipz]

MS Office for Mac is also available. You can get the Student/Home Edition for about $149. It is fully compatible with the Windows version, but does not have the Access (database) program. The Mac also comes with Text Edit program build in. Text Edit is a basic word processor, but can open, read and save programs in Word format. Neo Office is a free download which is completely compatible with MS Office.

[drmazziotti]

Thanks, all, for your helpful responses!

I especially appreciate the tip about Neo Office.

I think I'm ready to go order up my iMac -- it's been many months (since January) of thinking about it and asking around, before I could bring myself to place the order -- it's a lot of money, but 'twill be worth it.

I'm excited, thanks guys!

--Donna, who will probably be back w/ more questions and discussion after her iMac has arrived and she's learning the ropes