Appleworks...

[Omad0n]

Hi guuys I was just wondering, I know Appleworks is nowhere near as good as say, something like MS word, but i was wondering if it would be a sufficient APP. for most college papers and such. Seeing as I'm a poor college student I'm looking for a reasonable alternative. Also is Corel Word any good for the Mac? Is it even still around? And finally how would I get the most from something like appleworks? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

 

[Pepzhez]

Why is it that so many people insist on having a full-blown office suite full of all manner of arcane tools that they'll never use when all they really need and want to do is basic word processing?

Appleworks is always getting a bad rap, which is a shame, as it's a decent app and more than adequate for most needs. I use it to write all of my papers and such; as a word processor it's just fine, and I prefer it over MS Word. Is there anything more needlessly complicated and is there an UGLIER interface than MS Word? I ask you. MS Word has all the aesthetic charm of an IRS tax return form, and certainly does seem like it was designed by a government bureaucrat. In other words, ug-lee. And talk about bloatware: MS Office is the king of them all.

(And is there anything more overpriced than MS Office for Mac? Does anyone actually buy this thing for full retail price???Admittedly, though, most university systems have deals with MS which enable students to buy Office for virtually nothing. Office for Mac currently costs UT Texas students and faculty $15.)

I probably wouldn't recommend Appleworks for business offices or the like, who undoubtedly may need said MS Word arcane tools to do, oh, all kinds of arcane business idiocy, I guess. I'll stick with the only tools I need, with a simple and elegant interface.

Try Appleworks. I think you'll like it.

(I know nothing about Corel, sorry.)

 

[SilvorX]

looked around on the corel site, n it looks like only coreldraw and bryce are available for mac...time for someone to force corel to bring out corel's word processing app to mac...

 

[Sloane]

Re: Appleworks etc

Corel haven't produced Wordperfect for the Mac for yonks, shame as there'd be a market for it

If you're on a tight budget, there are better options than MS Word, plus as it's been pointed out most users won't touch most of the features.

Appleworks is fine (but I did move from it to MS Office as it was better my professional needs) but if you're running a system older than OS X, Nisus Writer may be worth a look and there used to be a free version.

 

[P-Worm]

I use Appleworks myself and love it! it is very easy to use because it doesn't have a million options like Word does. Sometimes it pays to be less advanced. It does everything I want it to do and it's dirt cheap. Pick up a cop, I think you will be pleasently surprised.

P-Worm

 

[job]

Appleworks is great, especially if you are running X.

It's stable and easy to use with all of the features needed to write reports and/or term papers.

If you need to open Office documents, like .ppt files or Excel files, you can get Thinkfree Office for $50 dollars. Thinkfree opens and saves MS Office files.

 

[MacBandit]

I purchased Apple Works with my new Dual Ghz/DDR on the education discount for $39 then I got a discount for buying a computer so that took another $20 off and I got a free subscription to Macworld for buying it and there was somthing else I can't remember. Basically it was free.

I have been using and love it. Much easier to use the Office and has all the features a College student needs.

 

[King Cobra]

I find making 2D graphics exceptionally detailed with Appleworks, especially with their choices of graphic styles, patterns, what have you. I can even imitate 3D, but it's not easy to do with a 2D program.

Word processing is simple, all 100+ fonts load in about a second in the font menu, and the button bar saves a lot of time for me.

Spreadsheets are somewhat easy to work with, and the program can recognize formulas as does Excel. (Ex.: "=$B$2+0.5*(A2)^2")

The only problem is that I can't drag down information in a pattern of cells (1, 2,...) as I can w/Excel, by dragging the square at the corner of the cell down. How do you do this in Appleworks? I find this rather important, since my Physics labs rely heavily on dragging data and such. I posted a Q thread, but I didn't get any solutions?

 

[alex_ant]

AppleWorks rocks my socks. I'm in college, and it's perfect for what I use it for. Unlike Office, it's lean and fast (important for notebooks), it doesn't consume an ass-load of RAM, and it loads quickly. It has all the features I need and more. The only ways it could be improved are:

- A few more general OS X interface updates, including Aqua-fied button bar and variable-width scroll elevator
- A little bit of added stability (it has crashed twice in the hundreds of hours I've been using it, but that is too many - fortunately it somehow manages to recover crashed documents so I never lose any work.

Other than that, it's my favorite office suite, and I'd never want to use anything else. I've tried Office v.X, AbiWord, WordPerfect, and OpenOffice, and none of them are as elegant as AppleWorks. (Never tried gobeProductive.)

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by King Cobra
The only problem is that I can't drag down information in a pattern of cells (1, 2,...) as I can w/Excel, by dragging the square at the corner of the cell down. How do you do this in Appleworks? I find this rather important, since my Physics labs rely heavily on dragging data and such. I posted a Q thread, but I didn't get any solutions?

The solution... well, you could do what I did and stop taking physics.

 

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by King Cobra
The only problem is that I can't drag down information in a pattern of cells (1, 2,...) as I can w/Excel, by dragging the square at the corner of the cell down. How do you do this in Appleworks? I find this rather important, since my Physics labs rely heavily on dragging data and such. I posted a Q thread, but I didn't get any solutions?

You'll get more than your $39 worth with AppleWorks, but you'll have to put up with a few inconveniences, especially for spreadsheets.

I've used AppleWorks 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. It was called ClarisWorks in the earlier versions. The word processing and drawing functions are great, so I only use MS Word when I need to for compatibility with someone else. However, I can't use AppleWorks spreadsheet for long without getting frustrated and switching to Excel. Too many simple conveniences, such as dragging down, are missing.

To answer your question:

* You can copy a single cell's content (value or fomula) down with Fill Down (Command-D) or right with Fill Right (Command-R).

* If you have a row or column with a pattern (e.g., incrementing integers or a series of month names) you must use the Calculate > Fill Special menu choice.

 

[King Cobra]

>* If you have a row or column with a pattern (e.g., incrementing integers or a series of month names) you must use the Calculate > Fill Special menu choice.

That's perfect. I don't care about the simple drag down function for ease of use, as long as the ability to drag something down is there somewhere. Excellent.

How much do I owe you, doc?


And, alex, I appreciate the sense of humor, but if I drop Physics, I drop my carreer.

 

[Doctor Q]

No charge. Say hello to Schrodinger's cat for me.

 

[weeniewawa]

Corel Word perfect

The last version of Corel word perfect was for system 8/9 and was a free download. I still use it and it works great. Appleworks is a great product especially for the price and works good in X and comes with Dataviz(?) Maclink Plus which converts over most file types.

 

[Doctor Q]

I have Corel WordPerfect too. And FrameMaker. Both are good programs but have many more features than I routinely need. Using them for routine word processing feels a little like taking a Boeing 767 to go to the corner market.

The only technical complaint I have about WordPerfect is that it comes with way too many fonts! Too many to scroll through in every font drop-down. Even if you get a font management utility, you still have to sort through them all and decide which you want to activate when!

 

[doddsk]

Alternatives to Office for OS X

I use the Public beta of Okito Composer for all my typing. It is still a beta and is a little flighty (doesn't seem to like long documents) but it does basic word processing well. It's a cocoa app and looks very elegnat with an easy to understand interface. Check it out.

 

[nixd2001]

I'm intereste in getting AppleWorks to go with my new Shiny Doors (nee Wind Tunnel) box. But there's something that's currently unclear to me. Namely, is import/export MS Word something provided out of the box or an extra. The Apple site sez you can do this, with an asterisked footnote referencing the text:

Microsoft Word and Excel compatibility provided by MacLinkPlus, a product of DataViz, Inc., www.dataviz.com.

Does this mean these extra bits are included as part of the price and Apple are simply acknowledging third parties, or does this mean you have to fork out extra money to get them?

Anyone who's AW 6.2.4 on Jaguar, please let me know the score.

Thanks,

 

[RBMaraman]

Originally posted by nixd2001
I'm intereste in getting AppleWorks to go with my new Shiny Doors (nee Wind Tunnel) box. But there's something that's currently unclear to me. Namely, is import/export MS Word something provided out of the box or an extra. The Apple site sez you can do this, with an asterisked footnote referencing the text:

Microsoft Word and Excel compatibility provided by MacLinkPlus, a product of DataViz, Inc., www.dataviz.com.

Does this mean these extra bits are included as part of the price and Apple are simply acknowledging third parties, or does this mean you have to fork out extra money to get them?

Anyone who's AW 6.2.4 on Jaguar, please let me know the score.

Thanks,

6.2.4 allows you to open word and Excel documents and it also allows you to save your files as word and excel documents. The put that thing about DataViz on there because they provided the technology for the program and because they wanted a little more publicity. Get AppleWorks. You'll love it.

 

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by nixd2001
I'm intereste in getting AppleWorks to go with my new Shiny Doors (nee Wind Tunnel) box. But there's something that's currently unclear to me. Namely, is import/export MS Word something provided out of the box or an extra. The Apple site sez you can do this, with an asterisked footnote referencing the text:

Microsoft Word and Excel compatibility provided by MacLinkPlus, a product of DataViz, Inc., www.dataviz.com.

Does this mean these extra bits are included as part of the price and Apple are simply acknowledging third parties, or does this mean you have to fork out extra money to get them?

Anyone who's AW 6.2.4 on Jaguar, please let me know the score.

Thanks,

I just bought AppleWorks with my Dual/Ghz/DDR machine and yes it does include MacLinkplus.