Personally I think Microsoft Word and office products are over rated! I am not familiar with Pages.08 on iWorks but looking at apple.com it should be able to open the document but depending on the computer it has been sent from the formatting may not be compatible that is where this alternative may be helpful:
The reason why you are getting the 29 day trial is because you need to buy Microsoft Office at around the £100 mark cheeper if you get the teacher or student pack but you do need to fall into one of the categories. If you want a free version of a office based app then search for openoffice.org which is a free 100% legal free-ware app for Mac, Linux and Microsoft PC's. OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. You do need to have your start up disks which you got with your Mac. I would advise printing out all the how to setup pages which will explain setup of openoffice. When you do receive a document in a microsoft format it will convert it and similarly convert it back to microsoft format when you save it. I have been using it for years and because it is made by developers it will have less bugs and pieces missing from the software than you may think because the developers put there name to it and they want to get a good rep for there work. Openoffice also has the likes of Impress, Draw, Math, Calc, Base and Writer which is like MS Word. The apps all as far as I can remember come as a pack when you download and install, but I may be wrong. I originally found out about Openoffice on the BBC Click program on News 24. Hopefully this should sort you out.
P.S. Sorry for the delay and war and peace type reply but it was a bit more tech heavy than how do I click and save!
Enjoy! Tell me how you get on if you do decide to download it!
I woke up this morning with money coming out of my backside and I counted it all out and it totaled £1999, I thought I wasn't feeling too grand!