The new iWork 08 is a good deal for $79 if you need an affordable office suite. While the features in the package are not as rich as in Microsoft Office, it covers much more than just basic tasks. iWork applications can read Microsoft files and can save files in older formats. Installation is easy. The addition of Numbers added a spreadsheet to the suite, making it a fully rounded out suite. The suite offers attractive and intuitive interfaces, new features for image editing, page layout and printing and the applications integrate will with each other, with iWeb, and with iLife.

I have done most of my work with Pages, since word processing is my most used application. It appears to be a combination of straightforward word processing and publishing. There are 140 templates to choose from including a nice variety of templates for letters, envelopes, newsletters, brochures, reports, etc. Formatting options are available in the Paragraph Styles sidebar. Templates are easy to edit and making a document with images was simple. I used the Travel Journal template, easily modified for my purpose, to put together a twelve page document with recipes, pictures of the foods and pictures from my iPhoto collection with very little difficulty. I was able to copy PDFs from the Web, drop them into the document, integrate them with photos and my own text in a seamless fashion, producing a great looking document that printed easily in nice color to send out to my gourmet club. They were all impressed by the appearance and I would not have been able to put it together as easily or nicely with Microsoft Word, despite my many years of using that program.

Under the Views tab at the top left of page, you have a variety of options to help with your document. You can leave comments for other readers, notes for yourself, track changes, and do a spotlight search for word. You can also view your document as a thumbnail, allowing for easy movement from one page to another in a document with a large number of pages. Everything you would expect from a standard word processor seems to be available in the program. Using the toolbar, you can select what you would like to add to your document to spice it up in seconds. You can add shapes, tables, charts, and other images to enrich the look of your document. The only flaw I have found involved saving a Pages document with formatting to Word and losing some of the formatting. I just saved a document by exporting to Word (File > Export) and half the document lost the font and spacing while the other half preserved the original. I will have to continue to experiment with this issue. Rather than run the risk of losing anything, I usually export to PDF format for sending documents to others. For my purposes, I also found that I can create envelopes more efficiently when using MS Word, since I had to go back to the Template chooser to find envelopes. I was unable to find a way to make labels for mailing, which is very simple on MS Word and a feature I use frequently.

I have spent less time with Numbers, the newest addition to the iWork 08 suite but I have set up a spreadsheet for my invoice tracking and I found it to be far simpler to use than Excel (at which I am no expert). Numbers does not have all of the features of Excel, but it has more than enough for me. Numbers is a little more like a publishing program than a spreadsheet. You can start to work either by opening a blank page or selecting one of the templates designed for tasks such as expense reports or mortgage calculations. Then you draw a small spreadsheet table onto the page, making it just large enough for the information that you need to enter. More than one spreadsheet can be added to a single page, along with text boxes or photos that can be used to illustrate the data. Numbers can also import and export Excel spreadsheet files so there is no problem collaborating with those who use Excel.

I have very little use for making presentations, but I did create one with Keynote just to try it out. Keynote gives you a fairly comprehensive set of presentation tools, including charts, tables, and several impressive design templates. It has an Alpha tool for rendering backgrounds of photo images transparent, and really slick animation and transition effects. While you can create great presentations using Keynote, they are only useable on a Mac. That presents no problem for Mac users, but if you have to give a presentation where there is no access to a Mac, you still need to use Power Point.

Since I never used Keynote in its earlier versions, I cannot comment on the changes. Information I have read indicates that there are a few new templates and slide transitions, and the Smart Builds feature makes it easier to put together a slide show by automatically forming an animated side show when files are dragged from the Media Browser window (which includes your iPhoto library).

Using this suite has been easy and I will continue to play with it to see what else it can do that I need. I created this review in Pages.

Pros: Overall, the suite is easy to use, creates good looking documents and presentations and is quite affordable. Inclusion of Numbers makers it a more complete office suite and Numbers is easier to use than Excel for simple spreadsheets.

Cons: Some difficulty preserving format when exporting from Pages to Word, Numbers is not a heavy-duty spreadsheet for engineering calculations, iWork�08 lacks an e-mail application, Pages lacks a template for label making.

So far, I would give it a 4.5 out of 5 rating.