So I've been slowly coming around to Mac's Pages (part of iWork). The more I discover about it, the more I really love the interface and what it offers in terms of flexibility. The learning curve is a bit slow at times, but overall I really do feel like it is worth taking the time to learn. It makes things look so much better in general.
Once I came to understand the difference between a word document and page layout, my life became significantly better. Short version: page layout is basically like Publisher mixed with Word and it's very awesome.
Now on to the disappointment:
If you want to make name tags or name badges in Pages, don't even try, because it is fail. The issue with pages and name badges is that you cannot make a bunch of mail merge fields in the same page. This is something Word does very well, but Pages does not. In order to mail merge in Pages, it must put a different name badge on each page in Pages. Something Word has been able to do forever. Ugh.