Is OpenOffice.org Right For You?

[Vincent Ferrari]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.macworld.com/article/137436/2008/12/openofc3.html' target='_blank'>http://www.macworld.com/article/137...2/openofc3.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"OpenOffice.org is a powerful productivity suite-including tools for word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows and more-with one major additional feature: it's free. Whether OpenOffice 3-the first version to run natively on OS X and Intel-based Macs-is right for you essentially comes down to this decision: can you live without the latest features in Microsoft Office 2008? Most of the tools you need for productivity are here, minus an e-mail client. There's Writer, a powerful word processor; Calc for spreadsheets; Impress for slideshows; Draw for basic drawing and graphics; and Base to serve as-you guessed it-a database."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1229089799.usr18053.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I've tried Open Office in the past and never really liked it.&nbsp; Neo Office was closer to what I expected as far as being a Mac App, but that was before OO.org decided to go with a native Mac UI.&nbsp; Brandon seems to like Open Office, but calls it an 80-20 product; it has enough oomph for 80 percent of the people who need an office suite.&nbsp; And, unlike Microsoft's watered-down "don't compete with the Windows version or else" version of Office, it's 100% free.&nbsp; Maybe it's time I gave it another look...</p>

[crimsonsky]

I've looked at OOo briefly when it first became a "true" Mac app, but didn't keep it around. I get too many documents that require better compatibility than NeoOffice could provide. (Yeah, I said NeoOffice and I used it for quite a while a couple of years ago. But NeoOffice is based on OOo).

I wound up getting MS Office and use it all the time -- well Word anyway, which is really the only component I use. It's a pig, still slow and still uses more resources than I'd prefer but it opens every single Word document I get from other folks including the graphics heavy newsletters and bulletins I do for my church.

I don't have any huge incentive to use either NeoOffice (anymore) or Open Office. If my needs were more simple, I'd probably be content with the alternatives, but for many folks, Office is really a requirement.

[TopDog]

OpenOffice is great! I use it on my Windows and Linux PC's.

...but on Mac we have a fantastic alternative called iWork ;)

I feel iWork is well worth the price compared to OOo and MS Office.

[Vincent Ferrari]

OpenOffice is great! I use it on my Windows and Linux PC's.

...but on Mac we have a fantastic alternative called iWork ;)

I feel iWork is well worth the price compared to OOo and MS Office.

I love iWork and think Pages is the best word processing app ever. Keynote is marvelous.

Numbers, however, for me, is a joke. It's great for making nicely presentable spreadsheets and such, but I use a lot of pivottables and analysis tools in Excel and that just doesn't exist in Numbers. If I wanna make pretty tables and so on, Numbers is the cream of the crop, but when I want to get work done, it's all about Excel. It isn't perfect, but it's Excel.

[Macguy59]

Numbers, however, for me, is a joke.

Bingo. It's geared for ease of chart making. A case of trying to reinvent the wheel (not to mention an investment in custom Excel macros). Neo Office is pretty good but I'm staying with Mac Office 2008 for the time being.

[k.satirli]

I got Office 2008 for a mere $15, due to a (huge) student discount (although, the normal price would be $50, still very affordable) and I have not looked back.

Perfect compatibility with my Office 2007 documents, usable interface and, as far as I can tell, no resource hogging.

what more could I wish for?

[doogald]

I used NeoOffice since I bought my MacBook two years ago, but I switched to OO when it came out a few months ago; I grew tired of the constant updates to NO.

I do have iWork but Numbers truly isn't there yet, and spreadsheets are what I use most. Any text stuff I do doesn't need to be formatted much so even TextEdit is good enough for me.

Saying this, I did buy Office 2008 Student/Teacher edition for the MacBook we bought for my son's birthday, as I think that collaborative work with his classmates will probably be much easier with MS Office.