Appleworks worthy?

[plutnicki]

In my quest to become MS free, at least on my new laptop, I'm considering buying and installing Appleworks. Is it a decently worth spreadsheet and word processing software? That's all I really need to have running, the rest is fluff as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, now that I think of it, I think I got a version of Appleworks that came with my iMac, as a standalone app, that should install on the powerbook, no?

Why don't the powerbooks come with Appleworks pre-installed like it did on my iMac?

Thx,

[HasanDaddy]

AppleWorks is fine

One reason MS is kinda nice is because its really easy to send an MS file over the net and open it with ease on a WinDoZe computer

However --- we can create PDF's on the Print Screen, so maybe its not a big deal after all

Otherwise, AppleWorks is fine..... the spreadsheets are also fine, as long as you aren't doing any major Excel-type of operations on it...

[arogge]

AppleWorks is good for basic tasks, but it still doesn't include many major functions. The Microsoft file conversion filter doesn't always work, especially with complicated Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. AppleWorks also doesn't support Microsoft's PowerPoint files. I was glad when OpenOffice.org came to the Mac OS X platform, and I use it more than AppleWorks now. OpenOffice.org is much better at handling Microsoft's proprietary file formats, and it has many more important features than AppleWorks offers. You also don't have to worry about file incompatibilities between computing platforms since OpenOffice.org uses the XML file format standards (http://xml.openoffice.org/faq.html).

http://www.openoffice.org/

[QCassidy352]

even though I have MS office, I greatly prefer appleworks, and almost always use it over office. the only loss, at least for me, is compatibility with wintel boxes... but I have office for times when that matters.

[Doctor Q]

I've used both AppleWorks and MS Office for years. AppleWorks word processing has most of the features you'll need for letters, reports, and other regular word processing. It doesn't have every bell and whistle like MS Word, but it is more intuitive and straightforward to use.

AppleWorks spreadsheet is very limited compared to Excel. I usually can't stand it for long. But if that's all I had, I could manage. Number one on the list of missing feature is in-cell editing.

For a casual user, the AppleWorks drawing component is a lot easier to use than Word's drawing tools. And AppleWorks even has a painting component.

Apple's philosphy has been that AppleWorks is a consumer product, to be packaged with the "consumer" Mac models, but left out for "business" models, namely the PowerBook and PowerMac.

AppleWorks is badly in need of an update, just to keep up with the times, but it's still a bargain for what it does.

[tazo]

Originally posted by plutnicki
In my quest to become MS free, at least on my new laptop, I'm considering buying and installing Appleworks. Is it a decently worth spreadsheet and word processing software? That's all I really need to have running, the rest is fluff as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, now that I think of it, I think I got a version of Appleworks that came with my iMac, as a standalone app, that should install on the powerbook, no?

Why don't the powerbooks come with Appleworks pre-installed like it did on my iMac?

Thx,

no it is not. just use word.

[arogge]

Originally posted by tazo
no it is not. just use word.

I use Word too - AbiWord (http://www.abiword.com/) ;)

Who is going to pay for the $370 :eek: Microsoft license to use Microsoft Word? Note that "plutnicki" wants to become Microsoft-free and to have capable word processing and spreadsheet programs. Paying Microsoft an exorbitant amount of money for a proprietary and standards-incompliant product that does only word processing and not spreadsheets isn't the way to do that; downloading and installing OpenOffice.org is.

[MacMaelstrom]

Apple should make a more complete office suite... Apple Office. I'm sure it'd really take off. My aunt works at an all mac company where Office v.X is used. It's terribile. It takes 5 seconds to scroll on their dual 800 MHz G4s. Printing takes about 30 minutes a page on the fastest laser printers they could find. It's all because of Office v.X. Everthing else on the systems are fine.

[Flowbee]

Originally posted by MacMaelstrom
Apple should make a more complete office suite... Apple Office. I'm sure it'd really take off. My aunt works at an all mac company where Office v.X is used. It's terribile. It takes 5 seconds to scroll on their dual 800 MHz G4s. Printing takes about 30 minutes a page on the fastest laser printers they could find. It's all because of Office v.X. Everthing else on the systems are fine.

Funny, I use Office v.X on much older, slower Macs than your aunt's dual 800, and I've never run into any of those problems. I think your aunt's company needs to hire a systems person to come in and figure out what the trouble is.

[MacMaelstrom]

I just had a brainstorm...Might by MS Anti-piracy stuff. They might have installed the same SN on all the macs,, and they're networked

[MrMacMan]

go for Office, its complete, apple gets close to beating it, but not yet.

[tazo]

Originally posted by arogge
I use Word too - AbiWord (http://www.abiword.com/) ;)

Who is going to pay for the $370 :eek: Microsoft license to use Microsoft Word? Note that "plutnicki" wants to become Microsoft-free and to have capable word processing and spreadsheet programs. Paying Microsoft an exorbitant amount of money for a proprietary and standards-incompliant product that does only word processing and not spreadsheets isn't the way to do that; downloading and installing OpenOffice.org is.

abiword is good. i use it on RH9 a lot. that too me seems pretty good, opens up word docs fine, saves them fine :)
to me abiword seems better than apple works. i dont know why...

[Abstract]

How good is OpenOffice at saving a document properly in .doc format when there are a lot of bullets in the document? I posted in the Software forum that saving a document in Word format didn't work very well for me. All my fonts were 1 inch in front of my bullet points, even though it shouldn't have been more than 1 blank space in front. Its all very strange. I don't want this type of formatting problem occuring if I were to send a resume to someone, or a thesis to a professor, for example.

Originally posted by MacMaelstrom
It takes 5 seconds to scroll on their dual 800 MHz G4s. Printing takes about 30 minutes a page on the fastest laser printers they could find. It's all because of Office v.X. Everthing else on the systems are fine.

Call an exorcist. Rid the systems of the demon....the demon within!!! Argh!!!

[visor]

appleworks is junk.
If you want to do just a little more than vi can do, appleworks is not the tool of choice.

[arogge]

Originally posted by Abstract
How good is OpenOffice at saving a document properly in .doc format when there are a lot of bullets in the document?

There are problems with this conversion, but it should get fixed. AppleWorks has a similar problem. Isn't it fun having to work with Microsoft's proprietary file formats? :(

[Gus]

After being a staunch AW user for years, I gave in and got Office v. X when my Univ. was selling it for $9.95 (yes, nine dollars). While I like Word for the most part, all I can say is that I also think it is very slow. Scrollin gis slow, and that stupid automatic spell checker is too slow. I wish it also didn't have things like that turned on by default. I'd rather make the choice to turn it on myself. I do like being able to send and recive .doc files flawlessly though. Makes things a lot easier. I always had some strange formatting problems with OpenOffice also. It just gt to be a pain in the butt.

Regards,
Gus

[arogge]

Originally posted by Gus
After being a staunch AW user for years, I gave in and got Office v. X when my Univ. was selling it for $9.95 (yes, nine dollars).

I might consider buying it at that price.

[tazo]

Originally posted by arogge
I might consider buying it at that price.

i think word is an extremely powerful program and honestly if your rampant zealotism is preventing you from accepting a seriously good product, you truly do give a poor name to an already misjudged subculture.

[arogge]

Originally posted by tazo
i think word is an extremely powerful program and honestly if your rampant zealotism is preventing you from accepting a seriously good product, you truly do give a poor name to an already misjudged subculture.

It has lots of features, but Microsoft has deliberately made it incompatible with real standards and it's overpriced for what Microsoft offers. I haven't used Microsoft Word for more than five years and have never paid for the Office license. Software such as OpenOffice.org and Corel WordPerfect are very good products and do comply with real standards. Instead of paying for Microsoft Office, I can buy a lot of RAM or some Apple software instead. Why give money to the Microsoft monopoly that continually steals Apple's ideas and the ideas from many other companies? We should be trying to get rid of Microsoft, not support it.

[tazo]

Originally posted by arogge
It has lots of features, but Microsoft has deliberately made it incompatible with real standards and it's overpriced for what Microsoft offers. I haven't used Microsoft Word for more than five years and have never paid for the Office license. Software such as OpenOffice.org and Corel WordPerfect are very good products and do comply with real standards. Instead of paying for Microsoft Office, I can buy a lot of RAM or some Apple software instead. Why give money to the Microsoft monopoly that continually steals Apple's ideas and the ideas from many other companies? We should be trying to get rid of Microsoft, not support it.

lol when like 90 percent of the market is using your product, that IS the standard. lol.

[arogge]

Originally posted by tazo
lol when like 90 percent of the market is using your product, that IS the standard. lol.

It might not be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Microsoft Office files are sometimes incompatible with Microsoft Office. :confused: Office files won't always open properly with different versions of Office, and sometimes they won't even open properly with the same Office version that saved the file if the file is moved to another Windows version. :rolleyes:

[amnesiac1984]

Originally posted by tazo
i think word is an extremely powerful program and honestly if your rampant zealotism is preventing you from accepting a seriously good product, you truly do give a poor name to an already misjudged subculture.

I don't think it is zealotism to think that word is crap. Practically everybody on my course at UNI runs into problems with word because it is crap when we are doing assigments. Especially the confusing way of managing bullet points in a standard report format document. There are good ideas in it but they are implemented in a terrible way and only intrude and get in the way of the user. IT assumes far too much about what your are trying to do and then it won't let you do it differently. In short word is a terrible, terrible program.

[5300cs]

Originally posted by arogge
Instead of paying for Microsoft Office, I can buy a lot of RAM or some Apple software instead. Why give money to the Microsoft monopoly that continually steals Apple's ideas and the ideas from many other companies? We should be trying to get rid of Microsoft, not support it.

:o www.limewire.com (http://www.limewire.com)
Who said that? WHO SAID THAT???

When running 2 copies of Word (with the same CD key) on the same network, a warning message pops up and one instance of Word is shut down.

Use Open Source software and help fight the good fight. Anyway, I though one of the points of switching to the Mac was to get away from M$...

[Huked on Fonick]

Does Office X come/use seriel numbers? mine doesent.

[tjwett]

i like AppleWorks. i don't do a lot of office stuff though. it's actually really powerful and has a lot of features if you get into it deep enough. problem is that the interface is getting old and it's not that easy to use any more. i have a feeling the next version is going to have some MAJOR stuff going though. it's been quiet for too long and there is a growing market. i'm thinking it will have a totally new GUI, better word proc functions, better spreadsheet functions, and even maybe a WYSIWYG web design feature. i think it will include seamless integration with Keynote also. hell, maybe Apple is working on their own little suite of office tools for us. right now i use Keynote, AppleWorks, and FileMaker Pro and i couldnt be happier. again, i'm sensing some serious progress coming soon for AppleWorks.

[daveL]

Originally posted by tazo
lol when like 90 percent of the market is using your product, that IS the standard. lol.
The Apple store has Office listed for $499. Yea, right, $500 for a frigging office app. No way. That's getting really close to extortion. Put Mac users' feet to the fire, just so they can handle MS file formats. But remember: MS is not a monopoly!

[Ambrose Chapel]

Originally posted by amnesiac1984
Especially the confusing way of managing bullet points in a standard report format document. There are good ideas in it but they are implemented in a terrible way and only intrude and get in the way of the user. IT assumes far too much about what your are trying to do and then it won't let you do it differently.

I totally agree with you. I have to use Word with W2K at work, and when trying to make simple documents, Word is constantly getting in my way, especially with bullets, indenting too much and making it unnecessarily difficult to format things like I want, not how it wants.

I've had to do some field work this summer and took my TiBook with me, while my colleagues took the office Vaios. I used AppleWorks 6.2.4, made a simple spreadsheet, saved it in .xls format, and it opened fine back in the office on my Windows box.

Plus, I got as much done as the 2 of them combined. Obviously, Macs make you more productive. ;)

[Doctor Q]

The MS Office apps, and especially MS Word, suffer from a disease that I call "too smart". They try to save you time by guessing what you have in mind. When they are right, they seem very clever indeed. In Word, paste a word between two other words and an extra space appears. In Excel, type "Jan", "Feb", and extend a column down, and you get "Mar" etc.

But... when things go wrong, because the app's rules aren't what you wanted or expected, you can become quite confused. Sometimes, when you paste text or delete a paragraph, the style of the adjoining paragraph changes. Sometimes, changing a style doesn't affect the paragraphs you think it should affect. Sometimes print settings don't work as you'd expect. Getting the image properties to put an image where you want can be an exercise in frustration. Getting autonumbering to start and stop on the numbers you want can be hard. All of this can be explained and mastered once you learn to think like the program and see eye-to-eye with its habits. So if you use Word 8 hours a day or are willing to read Help pages or a manual, you can get quite efficient. Otherwise, you'll be one of millions cursing at your screen and wishing you had Bill Gates' home phone number.

That's one reason why a less-clever program like AppleWorks can sometimes be easier to use than a powerhouse, particularly for beginning or casual users.

P.S. Don't bother telling me if you personally don't have trouble with the particular troublespots I mention above. I've seen a number of people trip over exactly those issues, and they weren't idiots or people who hadn't met a word processor before. Some of them will take the time to master those features, but a lot of people would be wiser to stick with a simpler program.

[tazo]

Originally posted by daveL
The Apple store has Office listed for $499. Yea, right, $500 for a frigging office app. No way. That's getting really close to extortion. Put Mac users' feet to the fire, just so they can handle MS file formats. But remember: MS is not a monopoly!

In a capitalist society such as ours, companies can set their prices to be as high or as low as they want; if people don't buy that is their decision, and this is why our society works as it does-because people have the decision to buy or not.

[amnesiac1984]

Originally posted by tazo
In a capitalist society such as ours, companies can set their prices to be as high or as low as they want; if people don't buy that is their decision, and this is why our society works as it does-because people have the decision to buy or not.

that is a foolish statement and does not take into account the idea of a monopoly. Businesses have very little choice but to buy office for its compatibility and so microsoft closed all the formats and so workers buy it for their homes because they have little choice not to. THats the thing, they don't really have the choice to say no cos if you did you'd be in a "world of pain" (to use a friend of mine's phrase while saying what he thinks being a macuser is like (a pc guy).).

THis means the choice is very one sided, this means microsoft can charge whatever the hell they want and ppl will buy it. Soon this will backfire hopefully, or some anti-monopoly laws would be brought.

It is my understanding that the laws on monopoly are quite weak in the UK and many monopoly's exist but are strictly regulated.

[daveL]

Originally posted by tazo
In a capitalist society such as ours, companies can set their prices to be as high or as low as they want; if people don't buy that is their decision, and this is why our society works as it does-because people have the decision to buy or not.
Whatever. Drink the koolaid, what do I care.

[tazo]

Originally posted by daveL
Whatever. Drink the koolaid, what do I care.

i never said i agreed with M$'s tactics; i just am stating the fact that if you dont agree with M$ don't buy from them.

[daveL]

Originally posted by tazo
i never said i agreed with M$'s tactics; i just am stating the fact that if you dont agree with M$ don't buy from them.
And consequently are unable to deliver documents to your client in the format they require, which is not an open format against which other capitalist companies can compete. Then the JUST'US Department (CR 2003 David Lehenky) let's them off the hook. No money flowing there, wink, wink. It's amazing what you can do in this world when you have US$50B working for you.

Just my opinion, folks. I don't mean to offend, really.

[Ambrose Chapel]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
All of this can be explained and mastered once you learn to think like the program and see eye-to-eye with its habits.

Personally, I'd rather use software that thinks like I do rather than the other way around. Not that AW is great in this respect either, but it doesn't lead to the frustrations that trying to think like Word does...

[GeeYouEye]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
Getting the image properties to put an image where you want can be an exercise in frustration.[/B]
Biggest understatement of the year. I've used Office on both platforms for years, and, excepting word art, I still can't put images in the place I want them with any sort of consistency. I may have gotten lucky once or twice, but that was it.

The problem with AppleWorks is that it's missing a few key features, such as real-time spell-check (my biggest gripe), unlimited on rows in the spreadsheet, and any compatibility with anything in the database part.

[arogge]

Originally posted by daveL
The Apple store has Office listed for $499. Yea, right, $500 for a frigging office app. No way. That's getting really close to extortion. Put Mac users' feet to the fire, just so they can handle MS file formats. But remember: MS is not a monopoly!

What's even worse is the extortion from buying the Microsoft Office programs individually. If you only want one or two of the programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and can't afford the entire Office package, Microsoft still wants $370 for each program. So, if you only need Excel and PowerPoint, you are punished by being charged $740 :eek: because you didn't want to buy the $500 package. One problem I noticed at my local Apple Store is that potential customers would look at Apple merchandize and claim that they could only afford a less expensive system because they believed that they had to buy Microsoft Office too. :p The store finally took the promotional containers filled with Microsoft boxes that were in every section of the store and refilled them with Apple products. OpenOffice.org is even installed on some of the computers in the store, and a demo of this software gets some people to buy more from Apple. :)

[Squire]

Weren't there rumors of an Apple word processor called "Document" floating around a while ago? I got the impression that, after Keynote, Apple would release other products aimed at the MS Office suite.

I use Word a lot at work but I would much rather use an Apple word processor. Sometimes Word does things that I just don't want it to do. Drives me bananas.

Squire