iWork's Play for the Small Biz DesktopiWork's Play for the Small Biz Desktop

"Productivity suite" used to mean one thing and one thing only: Microsoft Office. Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint. Love it or hate it, most of us use Office daily to grind out bargeloads of documents, spreadsheets, email, and presentations.Since Linux started finding its base, open source apps such as Open Office and thinkfree have given "freetards" more choices and new reasons to flee from the clutches of Microsoft.

A year ago Google launched Google Apps and aimed the suite squarely at the small and midsize business market. Analyst Guy Creese, who recently wrote a report about Google Apps, says Google may have something there.

Now, with the release of Apple's iWork '08 suite, small and midsize businesses have even more reasons to abandon Office,writes John C. Welch in Datamation.

Welch considers iWork '08 - a suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation app - at about half the price of Microsoft Office, ($79) a viable choice for replacing Office in smaller businesses: "Even allowing for converting from Windows to the Mac, when you add up all the costs of the infrastructure WinOffice really wants, especially with Office 2007, iMacs are not much of a penalty after all. Not making your IT setup really complicated will save you most of that money on its own. So no, I don't think iWork '08 is any kind of shot at the Microsoft Office infrastructure and/or the enterprise. Rather, I think it's aimed at the people Office has left behind, and that is, when you look at the SMB market, a lot of people with a lot of money."

Do you run your business on iWork '08? Let me know why you switched and how it compares to Microsoft Office.