OpenOffice/NeoOffice

What are your experiences with OpenOffice and/or NeoOffice. Which is better? How is the compatability to MS Office? Better or worse than Office 2004 for mac? Better or worse than Office 2007? I would appreciate the help.

 

Office 2007? That's Windows only so irrelevant.

Better than Office 2004? I would say so say since they're free.

But I'd say go for NeoOffice as it's free and Universal Binary.

 

Open Office, I think, still requires X11.

NewOffice has worked well for me.

All I want it to do is open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, and maybe create simple Word and Excel files, so, I can't say I've stressed it all that much.

 

Well. Office 2007 is pretty munch unbeatable right now.

It seriously is a user interface revolution in my mind, and I can't wait til other applications follow suite.

Office 2007 is coming to OSX later this year isn't it? [it was originally scheduled to come out back in January...] I'm looking forward to that, assuming I get a mb/mbp.

 

Yes, Office 2008 for Mac, which is the Office 2007 equivalent, will be released in second half of this year. The name is confusing, but it will be released in 2007, not 2008. Or so Microsoft says .

 

Unfortunately, Office 2008 will not have the same UI as 2007. I am not sure of the extent of the changes, but I do not believe it will have the ribbons which really stinks.

As for running NeoOffice or OpenOffice, I would recommend NeoOffice if you must choose between the two. However, if you are at all serious about getting a good office suite, do yourself a favor and get MS Office 2004 for Mac or wait for Office 2008. I know that NeoOffice/OpenOffice have come a long way, but nothing competes with Excel, and if someone starts using some special formatting you will have a hell of a time trying to get it to open properly, and the more the file gets passed back and forth the harder it will get. In this case it's best to go with the standard and unfortunately that is MS Office.

 

I just tried out neooffice this week on my mb. I used it for about 10 min and even though its universal, I found it to be less responsive and more of a pain then office04 for mac. So when you add compatibility's issues with other office suits, unless your on a tight budget MS office is the best choice.
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If i buy mac office 2004 now do you think they will have an upgrade to 2008 for a lower price?

 

If microsoft follows the trend in non OS softwares, then no, you'll have to pay full price. You never know though. They offered an upgrade path from XP to Vista, so they may have some sort of upgrade price to Office 2008. If you can wait, do so it'll be cheaper overall.

 

doubtful.

Make due with the free stuff for now.

 

Eeek. Office 2007 is horrid IMO. I've yet to find anyone who likes that god awful ribbon and the way MS pretty much FUBAR'ed the entire thing.. and the rest of their apps by turning the "Classic Menus" off by default. Every Windows user I know has turned Classic Menus back on immediately in all of their MS applications.

NeoOffice is great though. No reason to have Microsoft on your Mac at all

 

I did some work on NeoOffice last night.

For 'basic' word processing and spreadsheets, you cant tell any difference between NeoOffice and Microsoft Office. If you just want to write letters/essays/reports/basic spreadsheets, NeoOffice is great and 100% free so you can give the finger to Microsoft.

If you need to do more complex operations - very detailed track changes, swapping documents with unusual and very specific formatting and other very advanced operations then you might experience some hiccups with NeoOffice. In other words for professional use in an office environment it might be worth forking out.

My experience - I use Microsoft Office in my day to day work drafting policy documents for government departments and absolutely need it at work. But for my home laptop - I've been offered a 'free' copy of MWord for my Mac but I am not going to install it; NeoOffice is more than adequate for drafting Word documents and financial spreadsheets. When I need to work at home I can view and edit all my Microsoft Word docs no problem so don't see any reason to install Office.

I guess other more advanced users might get/need extra functionality provided by the Microsoft version (I don't even know what functionality that might be!) HTH