Specifif geeky Apple Mac question!!

[Dottoressa]

Various kind MNers have offered their views on Apple Macs and I am completely sold on the idea - but my DH has two specific questions. Could anyone help?

1. He wants to know if you can do tables on them (as in boxes with lines). He does his tax return on our PC, and he says it can add up and such like if he puts all the info in a table. He needs a Mac to do the same...

1. He produces a multi-page booklet, using MS Publisher at the moment. We gather that you can't run Publisher on a Mac - but can you get anything similar that doesn't cost a fortune? The man in the Apple shop said we could buy some programme or another for £600 (!) that would do multi-page brochures. DH needs to be able to add/remove text and then have the whole thing sort of shift itself round and re-paginate itself in the way it does in Publisher.

It will be most sad if we are forced not to get a Mac because he can't do his brochure. Please, please advise us, techno mums!!

[candyy]

Heya,

By boxes with lines do you mean an excel package? You can definately get Microsoft Excel for a mac.

I think the man who advised you may be referring to Quark Xpress which seems to cost around £600. There's also some new design software out called InDesign, which is for macs though I'm not sure what it costs.

Do you have an apple mac store in your nearest city? If you give them a call direct they can advise you.

This link may also be of help:
www.macworld.co.uk/forums/msgs.cfm?msg=44651&forum=4

[Dottoressa]

Thanks Candyy!

I'm not sure if it's Excel that he uses - I have a feeling it's something in Word, but I'm not sure. Though if it is in Word, it should also be on a Mac, unless I'm very much mistaken? (Which I could be!)

The link is helpful. Thank you!

[llareggub]

I've got my macbook open and I've got something called Pages, which is similar to Word.

Under page layout in Pages, it gives various options for different types of brochures. I've never used Publisher so no idea how it compares. Have you googled to see if you can run Publisher? We've got some sort of doodah that allows us to run word, excel etc.

I'll ask DH (a supergeek type) later if this will do the job for you.

[llareggub]

BTW, most designers prefer Macs so I'd be very surprised if you can't find something to meet your needs. The people in the Apple store in Solihull are very good, don't know if that helps? We found them very knowledgeable.

[Dottoressa]

Thanks, llareggub. How handy, being married to a supergeek!!

[candyy]

Yes you can get the microsoft software for macs which includes word, powerpoint, excel. I think this may be it www.ebuyer.com/product/140097

Is DP freelance, or does he work for a company? If so, and they have macs in the office, they may let him take home software and download it on to his computer at home. The place I work for let me do this, which means I haven't had to buy software for my mac at home.

[RubberDuck]

I use Pages and Numbers, but you can get Microsoft Office for Mac if you need it.

I found a nice low level Publisher equivalent (obviously not as advanced as Publisher but pretty nice to play with and great for school projects) - PrintFolio - is only about £60/£70 depending where you buy it from and which features you want.

[Dottoressa]

Ooh, that would be nice. Sadly, he is freelance, so we are a bit stuck with having to buy whatever extras we need. But if they do the job and are reasonably priced (i.e. considerably less than £600!), it would undoubtedly be worth it to switch to a Mac!

[candyy]

Yes, macs are brilliant

[RubberDuck]

TBH, it depends what he uses it for. I vastly prefer Pages to Word (for instance) and don't need to, say, send Word docs to a publisher and have editor comments embedded in and sent back. My husband does so he bought Microsoft Office for his mac.

You can export as a Word doc but more advanced Word features (such as the comments situation) won't work between them, obviously. If exactly layout is an issue and you don't need the recipient to edit (say for sending invoices/proposals to clients) then you can always send them a pdf which is probably more universably viewable anyway.

Numbers I use less but again seems easier to use than Excel, just doesn't have quite so many features.

iWork is cheap enough to give it a go, anyway. Another option is OpenOffice for Mac which is free, opensource software that does a similar job. I haven't used the latter though.

[EachPeachPearMum]

llaregub I got my new macbook from the same store!