Apple Training Series: iWork 08 (Apple Training)

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $22.98

Customer Reviews:

Great intro to Keynote [Posted on 2008-05-06]
After completing the chapters on Keynote I really felt like I had accomplished something, that I could use the software to it's full potential.

After completing the chapters on Pages, it seemed I knew enough to get started and could probably find my way around well enough...I guess.

However the chapters covering Numbers seemed lacking -- dreadfully so. This book placed too much emphasis on how cool it is to embed media in a spreadsheet and not enough emphasis on using Numbers for more realistic spreadsheet-specific tasks; in fact, I couldn't help wondering whether the Numbers projects on the DVD would have been better suited for Keynote or Pages.

Would a typical Windows user choose to use Excel to plan an event? Why, when they could use Word or Access instead? Both Keynote and Pages can handle simple tables and charts. If that is all Numbers can do, why do we need it, other than for it's ability to open Excel files? And there you have it - that is exactly what this book failed to show. The good news is that the Numbers User Guide on the iWork '08 installation disk goes much more in depth on using Numbers more realistically as a *spreadsheet* program.

P.S. I agree with comments by others that this book takes a very elementary approach, but that is what I expected, so I didn't mind. I found the pace tolerable.

good but little on pages [Posted on 2008-05-10]
I wanted to learn how to use Pages and this gave a very brief overview. No information at all about creating your own templates.

A take it slow, learn it well approach [Posted on 2008-05-24]
I finally went back to Mac after 12 years with a PC, and decided to tackle iWork on my MacBook to be more productive in creating teaching materials.

After research, I purchased this iWork 08 training series. I did as the author suggested, and took it step by step from the beginning. Oh, lest I forget, I did install 4 gigs of RAM from [...] so that iPhoto could zoom (it does!). This morning I spent about 1.5 hours on Lesson 1, and started Lesson 2.

I am confident that this manual will serve as an excellent resource for when I am ready to branch out on my own in creating slide presentations and documents.

Why am I confident? The author walks the reader through, step by step, and refers the reader to the lessons you download from the enclosed CD to check your work.

I've read reviews that say this series spends too much time on Keynote. I disagree because it's obvious the skills embedded in Keynote are transferable to the other iWork programs.

I am pacing myself to do about a lesson at a time, and by the time school starts next year, I expect to be "fluent" in iWork.

Thumbs up:)))))))

Iworks [Posted on 2008-07-07]
Pretty basic. Nothing much to learn from the book. I guess it has been made for the first timers to iwork or mac. I did not find it very useful. it was very average

iWork 08 Apple Manual lacking [Posted on 2008-08-02]
Although simple & easy to use, this manual lacks detail. In general it is not close to the books in David Pogue's "The Missing Manual" series. Only he doesn't have one for iWork 08 that I could find. I will not purchase another Apple Training Series book.

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