Article: The first thing that snagged me about pages '08 was its price tag. It comes in at a low $79 CAN for the entire iWork suite, compared to the $399 price tag attached to the standard Microsoft Office: Mac package.
Pages features full compatibility for all of ones favorite document formats. Importing from a multitude of formats, the most significant being Office's .doc and exporting to a plethora of platforms. These range from .doc formats and PDF's to the more simple Rich Text Format or Plain Text for use with TextEdit or Editpad.

When opening the Pages application, it will load a template chooser, so whatever your needs, you should be able to find a pre-made version of that. Should you not desire to utilize any of these templates, you can easily switch the opening dialogue on or off. And if the variety of designs already made don't suit you, you can create your own for future use.

When you open your pages document, you will see that each page has a built in header and footer that are much more easily accessible than their MS Word counterparts. A simple click will get you changing these invaluable items, rather than having to navigate an assortment of menus.

A good window to utilize when doing work in Pages is the inspector window. there's a bright blue icon in the top-right corner which will make this assistant pop into view. You get all the basic document info on the first panel such as dimensions. There are 3 mini menu options below the large inspector menu, and the Info one lets you add a title, keywords, author and any comments, without placing them into the document and affecting the word count. This is also useful when you wish to put any restrictions on your paper to remember them, such as a word limit, topic, etc. The info panel also gives you a running word count, so that you don't have to keep pressing that annoying shortcut to do one each time you wish to check.

The Inspector window also gives you near complete control over your document. Everything from inserting tables and modifying them to inserting hyperlinks can be found in the tabs of the inspector window.

In short Pages 08 gives one all you would expect form another office client (namely MS Office) and more. And, it comes in a neat little package all for an unbeatable price. Apple has scored another home run with this bundle of software, and that's without going into Numbers and Keynote (the other 2 iWork apps).

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