I totally agree 1000%! If you HAVE to choose with only the two, then Pagemaker before Publisher. If you are going to be working with files that you will be sending to printing and design companies, many will just laugh at you if you said its a publisher file, not even Kinkos will take a Publisher file last i checked. Just be ready to self teach yourself how to may proper PDF files! Thats something you would need to do anyway but not even Publisher makes that an easy task!