OpenOffice.org

[roadbloc]

I use it because it is free, but it is still a little rusty with compatibility with other formats (especially slideshows.)

I didn't like the look of Office Mac 2008. It looked complicated and overpriced. Is there any other alternative (preferably free)? Or should I just stick with OpenOffice.org and hope it get's better as time (and updates) go on?

 

[GoCubsGo]

Is this an FYI or is there an issue. Most on this site know of the app and use it if it suits them.

 

[devburke]

Is this an FYI or is there an issue. Most on this site know of the app and use it if it suits them.

I didn't like the look of Office Mac 2008. It looked complicated and overpriced. Is there any other alternative (preferably free)? Or should I just stick with OpenOffice.org and hope it get's better as time (and updates) go on?

Seems pretty clear he had a question to me.

There's NeoOffice, but it's basically an OS X-ified, slightly behind schedule OpenOffice.org, so it'll have many of the same issues. It's hard to offer alternatives without knowing specifically what you need to do with it. There's always Apple's office suite, iWork, but that's not free (although it's cheaper than MS Office).

 

[GoCubsGo]

It just didn't seem that way, clearly I misunderstood.

 

[roadbloc]

It's hard to offer alternatives without knowing specifically what you need to do with it..

I mostly use the presentation feature on it called Impress (OpenOffice's Powerpoint) and the Writer (word).

The compatibility with .doc files is fine, its just messes up if you've got bullet points or numbering, but the compatibility with .pps/.ppt files is rubbish, and i do make a lot of presentations.

Thanks for the speedy reply though.

 

[devburke]

I mostly use the presentation feature on it called Impress (OpenOffice's Powerpoint) and the Writer (word).

The compatibility with .doc files is fine, its just messes up if you've got bullet points or numbering, but the compatibility with .pps/.ppt files is rubbish, and i do make a lot of presentations.

Thanks for the speedy reply though.

Hm... well I never really need to do the presentations, so I dunno what to tell you there, aside from Keynote having a reputation as far superior to PowerPoint, but again not being free, and Google Docs having some kind of presentation thing, but it's probably pretty limited.

As for .doc files, I don't know how advanced you need to get, but if you're just talking like writing papers and stuff, to be honest Word is overkill. I'm in college and I write all my papers in TextEdit. It can handle .doc files too, as long as they're not too complex. Just tell it to wrap to the page, and you'd probably wanna change the default font to Times New Roman, since that's the standard for those types of things.

 

[roadbloc]

i guess im better sticking to openoffice then. i may consider buying iWork... ive seen some screenshots of it on the apple website and it looks ok.

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

[devburke]

i guess im better sticking to openoffice then. i may consider buying iWork... ive seen some screenshots of it on the apple website and it looks ok.

Thanks for the replies guys.

If you're gonna stay with O, consider checking out NeoOffice too. I abandoned it after freshman year since I have low needs and have just been going TextEdit, but at the time it was nicer to use on OS X than O.

 

[miles01110]

You don't even get "full" compatibility with Windows Office if you're running Mac Office, but it's a lot closer than OO/Neo/iWork.

 

[Middling]

You don't even get "full" compatibility with Windows Office if you're running Mac Office, but it's a lot closer than OO/Neo/iWork.

You don't always get "full" compatibility with Windows Office if you're running Windows Office.

For the OP: Koffice might also be an option. As of 2.0 it can run without X11 on Windows, *nix, Mac, but i'm unsure where to find Mac binaries.

Koffice used to be my preferred office suite back in my Linux days.

 

[mkaake]

i guess im better sticking to openoffice then. i may consider buying iWork... ive seen some screenshots of it on the apple website and it looks ok.

Thanks for the replies guys.

There's a 30 day trial available, if you want to give it a shot. I have it at home, but it depends entirely on what you plan to do with it - for some things, it's superior; for others, it's not up to par (but again, it comes back to what you're doing with it). In my case, I can't duplicate what I do in Excel with Numbers, but for most people, it's a suitable replacement.

I do love Pages though... it's great for what I need a word processor / page layout app for.

 

[roadbloc]

For the OP: Koffice might also be an option. As of 2.0 it can run without X11 on Windows, *nix, Mac, but i'm unsure where to find Mac binaries.

Koffice used to be my preferred office suite back in my Linux days.

used koffice when i used PC-BSD and ubuntu. thats how i found openoffice.org because koffice sucked.