I've used Word on both, and Word on Mac is better. It's not particularly good, but it's got a lot going for it - namely, a de-emphasis on over-the-top menus for sidebars - and it takes advantage of a lot of the neat Mac stuff that Windows can't do. It's still really ugly, especially compared to Pages, but it's better.

I've used Word on both, and while I like the UI better on the Mac, it lacks VBScript, which completely rules it out for many users, and is much slower than its Windows counterpart.

Pages has a great UI, but doesn't do enough. There are an insane number of features that Word has, that even a high school student would need, that are entirely absent from Pages (a robust referencing system, for example).

What I would pay big money for is something that has the functionality of MS Word Mac, without the bloat, and as speedy as Pages.

I'm sure it'll come along eventually. And absolutely, Word on Windows has some good stuff too. My point was, the program on two different operating systems is quite different, so it's not worth judging somebody based on their liking Mac Word.