Neo Office/Mac office 08 vs. office on bootcamp

[turnstylez18]

Ive been reading a bunch of threads concerning office and which is better...
so far im leaning towards the neo office route and waiting for office 08..

here's a couple of questions though...

im a business student and write a lot of documents, use powerpoints and excel...so i know i just need the basics...while im using mac though...all of my other classmates will be using windows...and we would have to send eachother files...

would i have ne problems since im on a mac if i were using neo office? and if i were using mac 08?

like will file extensions be different?
or will the documents turn out different on windows?

that is why i was also considering running boot camp...

thanks for ur help


ps...how well does neo office run? or is open office better?

 

[miyan]

I would recommend openoffice.org because it runs on many systems, like win, linux. You can share the files and be sure they look and behave everywhere the same. Openoffice uses an open standard document format. It can import from and export to the microsoft office file formats.

I can't say anything about Office 08 since it's not released yet. I would use openoffice or neooffice (which are practically the same). When office 08 is out, you may decide again.

 

[johny5]

I have used bootcamp and parallels demo + now paid for vmware.

I was also a heavy pc user of M$ Office 2007 for work until I made the switch to MAC. I have ever since been wanting to fully use the mac apps for work but find myself still using pc office 2007 under vmware as the current mac office version isn't up to scratch fully on things in comparison to Office 2007 on pc. I still run Entourage in tandem with outlook as much as I can as I like the look of it but outlook has better exchange integration.

I am crossing my fingers in the hope that MAC office 08 is going to include most if not all that the current office 2007 does so that I can cross off another reason why I need to open up vmware!

 

[turnstylez18]

after researching on this...i have my options...

mac office 08

or

leopard w/ boot camp (but still have to get xp ,i already have office but 2003, its good enough for me though)

or

the vm ware (but still have to get xp, but again i have office 2003)



i dont need office 2007...im going to my last year...2003 has done well

 

[ricksbrain]

After having nearly lost my dissertation in Office because of unexplainable quirks, once I was done, I decided to dump MS and try Neo Office. It took a bit of getting used to, but I love it.

 

[turnstylez18]

i heard neo office is slow...is that true? like its sluggish...

also will i have a problem the file formats...like if i made a word document on neo office will it be the same if i were to open it on ms word

 

[agenth]

I'm using NeoOffice on a 1.5Ghz G4 laptop with 1.25 Gb of RAM, OS X 10.3.9 and Neo Office is veerrrryyyy ssllllooooowww. I still love using it, but if I had to use it all day to open and close many documents I would probably be using Office, which ran much faster.

I've wanted to install NeoOffice on my wife's much faster intel laptop to see how it compares, but I haven't gotten around to it. She uses Office and I doubt she's going to step back in speed.

 

[turnstylez18]

well im not in a rush yet to use any office program until sept...hopefully mac office 08 will be out soon...

i guess i wont be going the boot camp route...

does office 08 have any compatibility issues with windows? like switching from mac to pc, thats my main concern...

 

[xUKHCx]

well im not in a rush yet to use any office program until sept...hopefully mac office 08 will be out soon...

i guess i wont be going the boot camp route...

does office 08 have any compatibility issues with windows? like switching from mac to pc, thats my main concern...

no one knows about compatibility yet because no one outside Microsoft apple development unit has it.

 

[maccompaq]

i heard neo office is slow...is that true? like its sluggish...

also will i have a problem the file formats...like if i made a word document on neo office will it be the same if i were to open it on ms word

I have both NeoOffice and OpenOfficeX11 on my G3 Blue & White 400 mhz Mac tower. OpenOfficeX11 runs slower than NeoOffice, so I use NeoOffice only. I can say that it runs fast enough on my word prosessing documents that are usually 100 pages or more. A year ago, I stopped using MSWord 5.1 on the Mac and went exclusively to NeoOffice. The Main reason is that my Mac has Panther 10.3.9, but Word 5.1 only runs on OS9 thus forcing me into OS9 under OSX.

Until Apple produces a headless iMac, I will continue using my Compaq 2.41ghz, as my main computer, using XP and OpenOffice that runs fast as the wind. When I do a backup of OpenOffice documents, word processing and spreadsheets, I do so on an external HD and also to my Mac. That way the files open flawlessly on either platform. I used to use MSWord on the Compaq, but when I transferred the files to MSWord on the Mac, I had to reformate them. Not anymore. Also, I can open MSOffice files that people send me by using my OpenOffice or NeoOffice. The Price is great: FREE. I know many people who have been using OpenOffice and NeoOffice for almost 2 years with a very good user experience.

 

[theBB]

If you use NeoOffice, you need to save your files in Office formats. I believe the default is an open document format. I suspect most of your friends will be using Office, so they will not be able to view open document files. This is not a complicated step and you'll only need to use it for files that needs to be shared. So far, NeoOffice was able to open any Word and Excel file I had and I could open Word files from Office on Windows. (I don't remember if I tried that for Excel.) However, I had a document that ended up with two more lines when opened in NeoOffice. In most circumstances, that is not a big deal, but I can imagine if your document needs to be exactly, let's say, two pages, you may end up with 2 pages and two lines on a third one. Granted, Word is not a page layout program, but it gets used for that purpose every now and then.

If the people who need to view your document does not need to edit them, you can always print as pdf and send them the pdf version.

I don't have any experience with the PowerPoint side of NeoOffice.

 

[bloodycape]

How about Office 2003 installed using Crossover for Mac? No windows needed.

 

[hogmog]

I can't comment on NeoOffice and Open Office as don't use either. However do use Office 2000 and 2007 on Windows machines and 2004 on Mac. Apart from Outlook / Entourage file incompatibilities, file exchange beteen platforms of Word / Excel / PPT is dead easy EXCEPT with 2007. Office 2007 introduces new file formats which cannot be read by prior versions (though MS is gradually releasing some plugins for older office versions). When using Office 2007 you therefore need to remember to save files in a format that colleagues will be able to read. I am assuming that there will be the same need to remember this when Office 2008 for the Mac is released.

 

[n00basaur]

neo is very slow when loading on my macbook only during the first time and OK during the start ups after that.

 

[nadyne]

I can't comment on NeoOffice and Open Office as don't use either. However do use Office 2000 and 2007 on Windows machines and 2004 on Mac. Apart from Outlook / Entourage file incompatibilities, file exchange beteen platforms of Word / Excel / PPT is dead easy EXCEPT with 2007. Office 2007 introduces new file formats which cannot be read by prior versions (though MS is gradually releasing some plugins for older office versions). When using Office 2007 you therefore need to remember to save files in a format that colleagues will be able to read. I am assuming that there will be the same need to remember this when Office 2008 for the Mac is released.

Office:Mac 2008 will support the new file formats introduced in Windows Office 2007 (.docx, .pptx, and .xlsx).

Also, there's a beta file format converter available which will convert .docx files to .rtf and .pptx files to .ppt so that you can view these files now. You can download the latest beta release of the file format converter (just released today!) from Mactopia.

Regards,
Nadyne.