WHICH PRODUCTIVITY SUITE FOR MAC?

I will be picking up my MacBook Laptop tomorrow and have been researching what applications or software I should be using.  I still am concerned about which direction I should be taking regarding a productivity suite.

NEEDS: A productivity suite that includes Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Slide Show capabilities.  I really do not need an eMail manager/Calendar/ToDo manager, I plan to use my Google domain for email/calendar functions and Zoho’s Planner for my TODO needs.   I do not have to do heavy-duty number crunching so any of the Spreadsheet programs below will meet that need.  While I use slide shows in the classroom quite a bit they are usually pretty basic and any of the suites I am looking at will meet my needs here.

Word Processing is the most important function of any productivity suite that I end up with and it must be compatible with Word 2007.  I do a lot of technical writing and providing the results to others as a result of my Special Education paperwork requirements.  We have to use a State mandated forms (which include check-boxes) and then I have to send these completed forms to the school secretaries, who use Microsoft Word 2007.  We have also started a pilot project of emailing some of the forms as PDFs to the parents, so the ability to change documents to PDF has become important as well.

Google Docs: I plan to use this as the primary productivity suite in the classroom for my students due to it being online/offline and platform independent.  I really like the ability to share documents and it makes it much easier for me to “correct” papers and we can save money due to less printing costs.  The Spreadsheet and Presentation applications do everything that my students or I will need, plus the aiblity to create Forms is a real benefit.  Unfortunately, while Documents does all the basic word processing functions it does not render the State Special Education forms correctly.  So I need a more robust Word Processor than gDocs.

iWork: This suite really intriques me.  It is native to the MacBook environment and Numbers/Keynote will do everything that I need for those type of applications.  From what I have read in my research it has come a long ways in its capabilities.  However, last night I learned that it does not support the check-box function and that is one of the things that I need in the State Forms.  There are work-arounds that I could do with the forms, but it is a change to the form which I shouldn’t have to do.  I have been playing with it on my issued Mac and have seen that it does not always accurately format documents prepared in Word.  I have a feeling that this is a release or two away from being able to just download the State Forms and use them.

Mac Office 08: This is the one that intriques me the most.  I have read so many conflicting reports on how this works on the Mac (from fantastically/great to absolutely horrid and everything in between).  It doesn’t use the ribbon interface, which I personally think is not a good thing, there should only be one Office interface.  I have been told that it does not render the State forms correctly, which is disappointing.  I will have to see this one in action before I can actually determine whether it will be useful or useless.

NeoOffice: The Open Office for Mac.  It is free and can do most everything I need, but it does not render the State Forms correctly either.   I have used it off and on since getting my issued Mac and it works for the most part, if I had to I could use it, but Google Docs and iWork both do what I want better.  I also do not like the interface, so this is a no go for me.

Perhaps the best bet for me at this time is to go the Parallels, Fusion and Bootcamp route, so that I can use Word natively in Window 7 (which I have a spare license for).  By doing this I could I could use Google Docs as my primary productivity suite and for Special Education paperwork needs I could use a combination of Word and my Nitro PDF program.

That is probably what I will do for now and when iWork is able to transfer more of Word docs features correcty, look at it again. However, if there is a really great deal for iWork when I buy my Mac then I would probably just get it, but otherwise will wait. I will likely download the 30 day trial version of Mac Office 2008 just to see what its capabilities actually are due to the confusion and different views of it on the web.

Of all the decisions about the switch to Mac this is/has been the most difficult for me.  I have to be able to use the State Forms as is and if I can’t then that causes other problems for me.  Actually it is more perplexing than serious, but one that I will resolve.

Now if I didn’t have to do Special Education paperwork, what would I do, but that is a completely different circumstance and set of requirements.

Any suggestions or helpful hints on this subject?