Thoughts on NeoOffice?

[theprizefight]

I tried doing a search of the forums but didn't find too much so I figured I'd start a thread. I was just wondering how many of you guys have used NeoOffice, and if you have, what do you think of it? I'm asking because I'm a soon to be convert to Mac from many years on PCs. I've been using MS Office for years, though I have used OpenOffice on my girlfriends Dell laptop (and for the most part it's ok). Is neoOffice very similar to openoffice? do you think neooffice will be satisfactory for my purposes, which are mainly just writing papers and making powerpoints (does neo have a presentation program?)

Also does neooffice have a spreadsheet program? I use excel pretty frequently to track various things, mainly my poker stats.

Thanks for the info in advance.

 

[Queso]

NeoOffice does indeed have a spreadsheet component. I've only used it sparingly since I own MS Office 2004 anyway, but I've found that it is reasonably quick and stable, and has enough features to cover what most of us need.

Not perfect, but certainly worth the money

 

[Compile 'em all]

You have 3 options:
- MS Office for Mac.
- NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org port that use Aqua instead of X11).
- iWork.

I personally use Keynote (from iWork) to do presentations. It flat out rocks and is really slick. I use NeoOffice for word processing and it works great. My brother uses NeoOffice too so we use the native OpenOffice format (.odt IIRC) when we are swaping any files around. NeoOffice opens .doc files just fine but in some rare occasions the layout/fonts might not be correct.

My advice is, if you deal a lot with MS formats (.doc, excel..etc) then get MS Office for Mac. If you occasionally get some .doc files then use NeoOffice and use keynote for presentations .

 

[Jame]

NeoOffice is pretty much the same as Open Office, usually about a version or two back on the new functions. So if Open Office works well for you then NeoOffice should also. I understand the next upgrade to Neooffice will offer some new functions so it may be even better then. NeoOffice does have a spreadsheet function and it also has a presentation function. It also has a drawing program and a database. And it has the added advantage of not having to use the X11 overhead like Open Office does.

For most all people NeoOffice would work very well for. The only bump in the road would be if you need to open MS Office files that make heavy use of the macros. There you would probably have to stick with Office, but other than that NeoOffice should work just fine for you. It's free, give it a shot and see how it does for you.

 

[tkidBOSTON]

I tried using Neooffice while in school but I couldn't stand how slow it was and decided to go with the more packaged Office:Mac.

However, now that I'm out of school, I have it installed on my new machines for that occasional doc or spreadsheet I need to open and it serves the purpose just fine.

Still, for the regular user, I'd think Office would be worth the investment.

 

[flopticalcube]

NeoOffice's spreadsheet is very good. The only real major problem is macros. THe macro language differs enough from Excel that I have to rewrite most of them. Other than that the 2.0.3 Beta patch 11 is pretty stable. For the money you might as well give it a spin. It does have a presentation program but there are others for the Mac like Keynote or Boinx FotoMagico for doing slide show presentations from photos.

 

[iJUNKY]

i'm very impressed with it. Considering MS Office is £100 or more, neoOffice is free and is so similar in terms of capability and layout.

for the money it's worth a shot. I only use it for essays and things like that, there are probably loads of bugs, but they'll get fixed eventually.