I read an article recently over Office 2008 for the Mac where the author, Paul Thurrot of Winsupersite.com, claimed that anyone who thought that Pages could replace Word for creating documents would have to be crazy.  At first I agreed with the analysis based on my experience with past versions of iWork, but then I discovered that I had been using Pages 08 on the Mac to do all of my word processing needs for the past several months and, aside form having to change the default margins, I have had no issues at all interoperating with my Office using counterparts in the graduate department where I am obtaining my Master’s degree.  So if I can get by using Pages in an academic setting where everyone is using Office, I fail to see why Pages could not be considered a replacement for Microsoft Office for the vast majority of users out there.  The only real shortcoming that would keep people on Microsoft Word is the lack of Word Art, but in my view that is a plus since Word Art always looks tacky.  There are many who would say that both programs are overrated and that we should all use OpenOffice, but OpenOffice always seems to make ugly documents with badly rendered fonts - and I just can’t work on papers that look ugly… it distracts me from what I am doing.  Are there any other Apple users out there who have dumped Microsoft Office and switched over full time to iWork 08?