office for macs

is there any other office-like programs out ther?
i feel that 150 for office is rather expensive and was wondering what other word and office processors you are using?
and are there any special deals for universities students ?

 

openoffice search it up, its a great alternative for ms office but I'm not completely sure if it's compatible with macs. Oh and it's free.

 

well... in 2 words... open office sucks lol i dont know... you can try iwork

 

iWorks isn't bad, but it definitely has a learning curve. I would say its geared more towards word processing that deals extensively with graphics. I use iWorks though for school, like projects, but honestly when it comes to word processing I like using word because of compatibility.

If you want to find out more about iWorks, I did a short review on it here a few months back. Just do a search for it.

 

I went ahead and got iWorks when I got my Mac. I mainly wanted to see how keynote was. I think I like it more than powerpoint, plus the remote works for it. And considering I get MS products for nearly free, I got MS Office as well. The only major difference is that it doesn't have One Note with it. And I don't believe it's UB as it's a tad slow.
Open Office is pretty decent. I still prefer Word... but between paying full price for office and getting open office for free... the choice is simple if you can't really afford it.

 

Office for Mac Student Edition is 150 like you said. Check with your school though. I know mine offers it for less, 60 or 70 I think. Honestly though, Office is pretty much it. There is not a lot of development out there because Office has a big stronghold.

 

well...looks like i need to ask around the dorm to see if anyone will lend me their copy of office for macs...

 

We usually encourage people around here to have legitimate copies, such as their own licenses, I'm not big of a microsoft fan personally, but my profession doesn't allow me to act in such a way. I would definitely check out NeoOffice, I believe they are coming out with an Aqua version now. It's compatible with MS-Office files.

 

only problem with that is that office:mac scans the network node that you are on for any duplicate serials, then if it finds one, it kills the program.

 

Yep microsoft wants their money badly, its probably one of the few things microsoft excels in...getting their money.

 

iWork also has an educational discount. My school hasn't signed a volume licensing deal with MS, so here iWork ends up being 1/3rd to 1/4 the price of the student version of Office.

At least give iWork a try. There are some demo DVDs floating around if you don't already have it. Keynote is nice and generally more pleasant to use than PowerPoint. (For the most part it's feature complete, except for equations, but software add-ons exist for that.) Pages is pretty good, but it depends on your needs. Some people find the styles engine in Pages much more intuitive than Word, others find it weird and too limited. Not supporting cascading/inherited styles is a surprising omission in my view. Cross-referencing isn't all that great either in the current version. I do use it for short documents though.

For longer documents I actually use LaTeX. There are some really great free LaTeX tools for OS X. It's only really suitable for long documents though and the learning curve is incredibly steep. The documentation is also biased towards engineering and science; tools like JuraBib for the humanities and law are fantastic but not well known. I actually use LaTeX for business letters too, but only because I have a nice set of macros set up and I like to be able to do conditional substitution (e.g. have two slightly different letters to two different people generated from the same document file).

 

I have a copy of iWorks, I guess you could say I might be one of those few who feel its not exactly fitted for word processing, like typing a research paper? Then again I don't think I really gave it a fair chance yet, and I'm just more familiar with Word and stuff.

I will say that Keynote is FAR superior to powerpoint, as for Pages its perfect for creating graphic heavy documents more so than word processing. It kinda has somewhat of a learning curve, I went out and bought an Apple Training Series book for it, but once I got the general idea it's pretty awesome.

 

Yeah, at my university, Office 2004 for the Mac is $75.

Another alternative is to use CrossOver and buy a copy of Office 2003 for Windows; I haven't heard any firsthand reports but supposedly it handles it OK.

Or one could install Parallels, Windows and perhaps the Office 2007 beta.