I'm looking to buy a laptop, my first one, and I'm going to use it for work mostly. Email, writing and reading (long) word documents, making powerpoints, surfing, etc...
Most of the work will probably be done in word.

I've looked at a lot of laptops, and it has to be thin, light, fast, visually pleasing, and 15 inch. Very few laptops fulfill all these criteria. Samsung series 9 is a potential candidate, but it supposedly has very serious problems with WiFi. Asus Zenbook is also a good candidate, but it has annoying problems, with a fan that is always on and never stops. The only laptop that seems to be absent of such serious or annoying problems is Macbook pro retina. Excellent quality and it seems it can't go wrong... or perhaps...

If I go with a Mac, I would buy Office 2011. Pages and other word programs are not as good as Office 2011 when it comes to features and familiarity, so there are unfortunately no real alternatives. However, I've read so so many enormously bad reviews about Office 2011 for Mac that I hesitate. http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-Office-2011/3000-18483_4-75305578.html#userreview, and http://www.amazon.com/Office-Mac-Home-Student-2011/product-reviews/B003YCOJA8/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 and so on...

So, what are your experiences with Office 2011 for Mac? Is it so bad that it is worth considering to buy a Windows laptop, for instance Samsung series 9 or Asus Zenbook despite they have big problems too? It seems that I am between a rock and a hard place and I have so difficult to decide what to do.

No matter what OS I use, I would just use LibreOffice. Multiplatform to suit any OS you could want, lightweight, (mostly) intuitive. open source, and totally free.

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/

That's what I got for my Mac. Don't really use it much, just as much I would have used it on a PC. So no real help there. Didn't know the Mac version only had 4 out of the 10 features the PC version have.

So the question is, do you need the 6 missing features or programs? I don't even know what the 6 missing programs are. I love my Mac. Well Wife's Mac, I just use it all the time.

Also if you really want a Mac, you can have Win 8 on it just like I do. I find the Retina version really good on my eyes and looks beautiful. Yes you pay a lot more, but now I am seeing it's worth it.

Just curious why 15"? Why not 17"? I hated the Mac for not being in 17" since my last laptop had a 17" monitor and side key pad, but now use to the smaller laptop Mac book Pro and find 15" can be better than 17" sometimes for portability and weight. Just wondering why you wanted 15"

As I mentioned, there is no real alternative for me. Word will be an absolute must in my line of work. Everyone uses it, no one uses anything else. The risk for compatibility problems, even small ones, must be completely (100 % always) avoided.

So keeping in mind that I must use Office, what should I do? I am so lost and confused.

At worst case scenario, I could perhaps force myself to use Pages until Office 2014/2015 for Mac comes out. But no one knows how long that might be. Could be a few months. Could be almost a year

I'm not sure how many of the missing features I need. I don't work with code, but just large amounts of texts, in different languages, and may use graphs and diagrams. But I might do more in the future.
That is not the worst part though. The worst part I've read is compatibility problems (things look a bit different, sometimes not open at all) and that it crashes a lot. Crashing is completely unacceptable. The summary impression I've gotten is that unless you're a casual office user and don't work with it, office for mac somewhat of a disaster.

I don't want to use parallel windows on a mac. I've read too much bad about it. I don't remember any details, but the impression I remember was that Apple wants to make it, somewhat subtly, difficult and annoying for you and subtly want you to go back to the Mac OS.
So if I have a Mac I want to use it on Mac OS.

17" is too big, 13" is too small, 15" is a good middle-ground. I need something big enough to read long texts for hours without straining eyes and something light enough to avoid ... being heavy and clumsy

What if Office do you need? What does the Mac version don't have that you need? I have Excel, Outlook (just use hotmail anyways so is this really needed?), Power Point and Word. Do you need anything else?

Also since the Mac Book Pro is nice and light, and I find it powerful (mostly for gaming, does pretty good, not the greatest but surprised how good it can be) you can dual boot to Win 8 if you really want all the Office stuff that has to offer.

Assume that I need Office (powerpoint, word, perhaps outlook and excel; online mail may perhaps not suffice), and if on a Mac, then only on the Mac OS and on no parallel Windows.

So with that as a kind of criteria, what do you recommend I do? Take my chances and buy a Mac with exceptional physical qualities, but with an Office disaster (that I will work extensively in) and wait with high hopes for a better future version... or... buy a Windows laptop that may have serious physical/hardware problems, but no software problems?
As I said... between a rock and a hard place

If you or anyone can find a really good and nice-looking Windows laptop without any hardware problems, I'd take it in a heartbeat. But literally every single Windows laptop I've looked at have had quite big problems...

I am no computer expert at all. I am always asking for advice. All I can say is I really like the Mac a lot. I am most of the time on the OS X. I am only in Windows 8 when I want to play games that are not on a Mac platform. I am not familiar with Word, but I use it to make my resume. My wife uses Excel since she knows how to use it and she says it's no different from the PC, at least for her. I have no experience with Excel.

Only thing I can say is get a Mac. If you are going to be on it a lot, spend the extra money on Retina, I find I don't get as much headache as I was on the PC. When I do get headaches it's because I was on it all day and not just a few hours.

Since you are already wanting a Mac, to me you have some extra money. So if you can Afford it, get a Mac with Windows 8. When I got ours, I got the people at the store to install everything for me. I just don't know what to do. They even installed the the Office Suite for me as well. Yes I paid extra but so worth it for me. And worse comes to worse, if you don't like what Mac Office does, then buy another Office (yes expensive) for the Windows 8 version that you can easily boot to if you so wish.

Or buy the Mac since you are leaning toward it. Get Windows 8 on there as I said, and then just get Office for Windows 8.

Sorry I really can't help you, but I look at it at the simple way.

You really want a Mac. You really want Office. You can get both. It comes to can you take a chance?

$3000 for Mac. It can be cheaper. I went the most expensive upgraded way at the time. Extra $100 for Windows 8. (could be more, could be less, just rounding off for simplicity) $150 for Windows. So since you are already spending Thousands on the Mac, a few extra hundred (especially for business/work) is really not that much.

So when it comes down to it. You get your Mac. You get Windows 8 so you can also use your Mac if and when you need a Win 8 platform, you will have it. Now question is, pay the $150 for Mac take a gamble. If it doesn't work, you lost what. $150. While yes it is a lot of money to me I think it's worth the risk. After all if you can afford a Mac, you can take the risk. If it doesn't work out then just buy it for the Win 8 version of your Mac and you are all set.

If that $150 really makes that much of a difference, then buy the Mac, get Win 8, then buy Office for Win 8.

Also see if you can get a deal if you are buying from the same place.

Sorry not much help, but hope this works.

Made a new post so it is lost in the clutter I just wrote.

Remember you can still get your Mac (as you said exceptional quality) to run Windows. I have my Mac. I use it mostly on OS X as I said. I also have Win 8.1 on it so I can also run Microsoft software or any Windows based programs when I need it.

Yes I paid more, but it was OH SO WORTH IT.