Comparison of Microsoft Word to Apple Pages

I was recently in a similar position because I needed something for school, and I went with Pages, pretty much on price alone. A 5-license family pack of Pages costs a whole third less than the Home & Student version of Word, so I can put Pages on both home and work laptops and still have extra for my wife's and mum-in-law's Macs.

The article linked in @mybrainishuge's response is pretty much spot on in comparing the two. Each application does the same thing just in different ways. Some good, some not so much, but then all word processor apps have their quirks. Since my needs are humble (I have easy access to InDesign for any heavy page layouts) I figured how bad could Pages be compared to the bloat and "kludginess" that is Word these days; fifteen years I've been working with Office and I can safely say I genuinely don't like Microsoft products, so Pages it was.

YMMV, so I suggest working with the demos for each (I know Pages has a demo, but I'm not sure about Word as the companies I work for always just gave it to me) and see which one meets your needs.

Wikipedia is the best source for comparison tables:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_word_processors

If you have questions about features not on the table, edit your question.

If you're familiar with Microsoft Word, then buy Word. If you don't want to spend as much, get Pages. Feature-wise, they're pretty close (if not necessarily identical in how they do things).

I have both but prefer Word for its compatibility.

I've provided a link below that gives a quick comparison, but nothing in depth. A lot comes down to preferences and needs.

http://www.macworld.com/article/156292/2010/12/officeshowdownwordprocessors.html?lsrc=rss_main