I just tried the iPad mini the other night and was impressed by the office suite included with it. To people who have used it, how does it compare to MS Office?
I guess you are refering to Pages, Numbers and Keynote. These are not included with the iPad, but sold separately (at $9.99 each)
Compared to MS Office (my comparison is desktop MS Office; I haven't even seen its tablet version), they have fewer features (fewer than Mac OS X counterparts, which already have fewer features). Whether that is an issue for you depends on your requirements.
Major lacking features are the ability to handle large documents and macros. They also are worse in importing MS Office files than MS Office itself.
On an original iPad, they also are fairly sluggy. I wouldn't write large texts in Pages, for instance, or create large spreadsheets in Numbers. Reading and revising existing not-too-large files is OK, though.
On the plus side, they look better and are somewhat easier to use (although the iOS versions, IMO, suffer from the limited interface that tablets offer)
Integration with iCloud for document storage and synchronization is somewhat spotty, but IMO has gotten better recently (my experience is syncing to Mac OS X Numbers and Pages; I have never synced with Windows or with Office documents)
Compared to MS Office (my comparison is desktop MS Office; I haven't even seen its tablet version), they have fewer features (fewer than Mac OS X counterparts, which already have fewer features). Whether that is an issue for you depends on your requirements.
Major lacking features are the ability to handle large documents and macros. They also are worse in importing MS Office files than MS Office itself.
On an original iPad, they also are fairly sluggy. I wouldn't write large texts in Pages, for instance, or create large spreadsheets in Numbers. Reading and revising existing not-too-large files is OK, though.
On the plus side, they look better and are somewhat easier to use (although the iOS versions, IMO, suffer from the limited interface that tablets offer)
Integration with iCloud for document storage and synchronization is somewhat spotty, but IMO has gotten better recently (my experience is syncing to Mac OS X Numbers and Pages; I have never synced with Windows or with Office documents)