I use both Appleworks and Numbers, and I have to say that for any spreadsheet larger than your screen display at 100%, AW is superior and Numbers worse.
For instance in AW, you can Lock the Title Position, so that no matter how many rows you add, the title row stays there so that you see which numbers should be input into which columns.
Select the table, then use the menu command Table -> Freeze Header Rows.
Additionally, in Numbers, there is no way to get rid of the left hand side panel which is a waste of space.
Not as much a waste as you seem to think. The upper part gives you a quick way to navigate between all the sheets, charts, tables, etc. in your document. AppleWorks also lets you put multiple tables in one document, but doesn't make it easy to navigate between them, especially if you want to hide some of them.
The lower part contains your table styles. A style is a collection of attributes (colors, fonts, sizes, etc.) that you can apply as a unit. Using the same style for multiple tables makes it easy to get a consistent look across your document; changing a style changes all tables using that style so they remain consistent. You don't need to stick to the built-in styles; you can modify them and/or create your own.
In Numbers, no matter how many times you tell it not to, it defaults to the default Font, which is infuriating. I don't want Helvetica but that's what it serves up until you wrestle it into submission.
That's because you're fighting the style system, instead of using it. Create a style that uses your preferred font, size, colors, etc. In the style's menu, choose "Set as Default Style for New Tables", if you want.
In Numbers, no matter that you've defined everything as say 14 point, if you Apple-X to clear a cell, when you type a new figure in it appears in default size which is not 14. The only way around this is to backspace-delete a cell, not Apple-X it. this is fun if you're clearing a quadrangle of rows and colums, or every other row. Don't Apple-X unless you want to have to reformat those cells instead.
A cell can get its style from many sources. By default, it uses the style set in the Table Style (chosen from the "Styles" section from the left). You can override that for a particular table by selecting the entire table and using the Font inspector (Format -> Font -> Show Fonts) to set a style for all cells in the table. But you can override that again by selecting a row or column, and applying a font style to that. Finally, you can override all of those for individual cells by selecting those cells and applying a font style.
When you Cut (Command-X) a cell, you remove not only the cell's value, but also it's formula (if any) and its font (including size/color). That's apparently what you're doing. Removing the cell's font means that it falls back to using the font specified for the row or column. But you apparently haven't set a font for the row or column, so it falls back to the font specified for the table. Since you haven't done that either, it falls back to the font specified in the Table Style last applied to the table. That's apparently Geneva something-less-than-14.
The right fix, to get what you want, is to create or customize a table style with the desired font/size/etc. If you don't want to do that, select the entire table, or at least select some rows or columns, and apply your changes to them. Fonts specified any of those ways will persist across Cut.
Numbers, can you preview to see page breaks on s/sheets without a lot of hassle? No. AWorks - of course.
From the menubar: File -> Show Print View
From the menubar: View -> Show Print View
From the toolbar: View -> Show Print View
The only criticism I have of Numbers in this regard is that there are so many ways to do it.
Worst of all: in AWorks you can instantly "define print area" which is on a drop down menu. You can print, easily, a certain area of your s/sheet. This is not there in Numbers, there is no way to tell it to print only a certain part.
This is "the worst of all"? Really? Seems like a pretty niche feature. Can you get it with printing a page range, and/or hiding rows/columns? If you do it a lot, create another table to extract the portion of your main table you want to print.
There are the many reasons why I'm still using out of date but superior AppleWorks for daily work; and only use Numbers for very small spreadsheets no larger than the screen size.
That's probably why you think the navigation panel on the left is a waste of space. When you start using the full power of Numbers, with multiple sheets and tables, you may find it not so wasteful after all.
Give Numbers another chance. It's not by any means a drop-in replacement for AppleWorks, because it has its own way of doing things and doesn't try imitate AppleWorks, but it's not exactly wimpy. It can do a lot more than you're giving it credit for.