There’s been a Mac version of Microsoft Office for years, but Microsoft doesn’t make a Mac version of its less-expensive Works suite for home users. So, a couple of years, ago, Apple stepped in and came up with its own suite called iWork.

The original iWork suite consisted of just two programs: a combined word processor and desktop publishing program called Pages, and a presentation program called Keynote. These have both been upgraded in iWork ’08, but the biggest change is the inclusion of Numbers, which is an entirely new spreadsheet program.

Pages ’08 gets a minor upgrade – a bunch of new templates for documents such as newsletters and reports, and some new graphics tools. Keynote ’08 has been given a more substantial refit, though. As well as new templates for presentations, there are a number of new transitions and special effects, and some new animation features that make it very easy to animate text and graphics in your presentations.

Finally, there’s Numbers, which in typical Apple fashion takes a different approach to spreadsheet work to that of traditional spreadsheets such as Excel. In fact, in some ways, Numbers is more like a desktop publishing program than a spreadsheet.

You start work either by opening a blank page or selecting one of the templates designed for tasks such as expense reports or mortgage calculations. It's then a case of drawing a small spreadsheet table onto the page, making it just large enough for the information that you'll need to enter.

Any number of spreadsheet tables can be added to a single page, along with text boxes or photos that can be used to illustrate the data. This makes it very handy for small businesses, as they can almost use it as a publishing program to design sales brochures or price lists. Numbers can also import and export Excel spreadsheet files, so there’s no problem collaborating with colleagues who use Excel.

Anyone who needs to do any kind of presentation work on the Mac will find that it’s worth buying iWork ’08 just for the new version of Keynote. And, with Numbers now thrown in as well, iWork ’08 provides Mac users with a very useful set of office applications at a very nice price, which can be extended to cover five users (the family pack) for an extra £14.

Vista compatible: No