Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice vs. Thinkfree Office

[L.Graham]

I've been using Microsoft Office on my Apple Macbook (Leopard, 10.5.7) for the past year or so, and I find that it has become quite slow and often unresponsive. I've been seeing these free alternatives, OpenOffice, and ThinkFree Office. Both seem really great; can you guide me in the area of which one to acquire? I'm looking for:

Speed (Above All)
Very Good, Clean and Simple Word Processing/Presentations
Mediocre Spreadsheet capability (do not use much)
And great Mac Compatibility.

Opinions?

 

[Keleko]

OpenOffice, NeoOffice and Lotus Symphony are all based off of the OpenOffice core. NeoOffice has the most Mac oriented GUI to it. OpenOffice 3.x was the first version of OpenOffice to have a native Mac interface. It is the most "MS Office like" of this group. Lotus Sympony I haven't really used a lot, but I liked the GUI it had in the short trial I used of it.

I've not heard anything at all about ThinkFree Office.

All of the above should have similar performance. I'm not sure you mean by "Speed". I did find that any of the OpenOffice variations are a little slow starting up, but then iWork takes a few seconds to start the first time, too. That seems true with any office suite unless it "cheats" by reloading at boot time.

Since they're all free, you can try any of the above and keep the one you like the most.