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Best free word processor?

You could use openoffice, it's got some good funtionality, although I don't think it's in development anymore. I think NeoOffice is the replacement.
 
OpenOffice is still being developed. That said, some of the most active developers forked OpenOffice to create LibreOffice. As I understand it LibreOffice is the one to use as there is more active development. NeoOffice is a JAVA front end laid on top of OpenOffice. NeoOffice is usually using a slightly older release of OpenOffice. Before OpenOffice made a port available for Mac, NeoOffice was the way to go. Now, not so much. Your mileage may vary.
 
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As the poster above mentioned, go with LibreOffice. Pages is a fantastic tool; however, I find LibreOffice to be slightly more versatile if you're going to be sharing documents with Windows PCs. Pages has this horrible habit of wanting to constantly export your documents to .doc format if you're trying to go cross-platform.
 
I went with Libreoffice, looks pretty good so far. This is all thanks to my lion upgrade that made office 2004 unusable. :p
 
I've been using LibreOffice Impress for the last two days and I am pulling my hair out. This is a bug-ridden, mostly unusable mess. Every mouse click on a slide gets interpreted as a double click. Very maddening. I keep highlighting, moving and/or deleting elements unintentionally when all I mean to do is click to place a text insertion point or an element selection point. This app is a usability disaster.
 
How would you compare the user experience of the word processors and spreadsheet apps between LibreOffice and NeoOffice? I'm still trying to decide between them....Or are they exactly the same?
 
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This, which one is best depends on what you're going to use it for. A simple, no frills one is Bean. Give it a try.
 
Pages

I highly recommend you to buy Pages, I am a big fine of MS word and I use it a lot for all my MBA assignments but when I started using Pages I paid the $20 and I think it has everything you need, it's smooth powerful. It is not as good as MS Word but it has everything you need plus it is so smooth and easy to use
 
Having both Ms Office 2011 and iWork 2009, I'd say that MS Word is a much better app of the two. Reason being is that most work places use Windows and Office, so a DOC file is more common. Pages doesn't handle cross-app compatibility too well when it comes to DOC files, and often the files don't look the same in Pages as they should in Word.

For a free version, there's OpenOffice, and I also think that Google has some Docs online word processing app.
 
I've been using NeoOffice for years, as an alternative to MS Office, and had no problems with it (or cross-compatability). We have Office 2007 at work, and I hate it.

When I decide to upgrade to Lion, I'll probably shell out the $10 for the most recent version of NeoOffice, but I've held off cus the last version works just fine for my needs (and is still free).
 
Google Docs

Google Docs is nice. It doesn't have all of the features that OpenOffice and Word has but it suffices. The one thing it has on the others is that it's in the cloud so you can access your files from any device that has an internet browser.
 
I use Open Office. I like it, it's a simple load up, you choose what type of document you want to work on, it has a nice interface, etc. It's quite snappy too, not as sluggish as I would have suspected.
 
ScottNWDW said:
Just get Pages for $20. You'll end up wasting the $20 on other things anyway
Click to expand...
The problems with Pages (and Numbers & Keynote) is that it doesn't have native support for Office documents, so if you have to share with Office users, it becomes a mess.
 
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