OpenOffice or M$ Office

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Basilrsa

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I am new to the Mac world and I was interested in getting some opinions on an office application for Mac. Obviously I have M$ Office Professional installed on my Dell, but now I need an Office application for my new Mac experience.
What is OpenOffice for Mac like or is M$ Office so much better?
My use is mainly for letters, attachments for e-mails, spreadsheets in a home setup.
Is OpenOffice fully compatible with M$?
(wow, I just figured out the spell check)
Thanks in advance.
 
Have you tried out LibreOffice for mac yet?

Edit:
From what I've seen OO pops out normal .doc documents that can be opened with word 2008 without a problem and visa versa with the .docx files.
 
Last edited:
Basilrsa said:
I am new to the Mac world and I was interested in getting some opinions on an office application for Mac. Obviously I have M$ Office Professional installed on my Dell, but now I need an Office application for my new Mac experience.
What is OpenOffice for Mac like or is M$ Office so much better?
My use is mainly for letters, attachments for e-mails, spreadsheets in a home setup.
Is OpenOffice fully compatible with M$?
(wow, I just figured out the spell check)
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Oo is ok, but you'll end up a little frustrated if you have worked a lot on msoffice on windows. iWork is a good alternative, but could also end up being very frustrating for it's significant differences to msoffice, even the formatting is not 100% compatible; this is a little frustrating especially if you need to exchange documents with a majority of windows users.

The new msoffice 2011 release is a great product and is very easy to understand, same layout, look and feel and is the only one that is completely compatible with windows msoffice, and the one to choose if you have used and love msoffice 2007 or 2010 on windows.

Best approach is download them all and make the decision for yourself.
 
[)roi(];5029195 said:
The new msoffice 2011 release is a great product and is very easy to understand, same layout, look and feel and is the only one that is completely compatible with windows msoffice, and the one to choose if you have used and love msoffice 2007 or 2010 on windows.
Click to expand...

Yes - msbashing. Now while I will gladly trash windoze as the worst OS I have ever not installed, office is a different story. The last version of office for the classic environment - was it Office 98? I can't remember - was by far one of the best products available for that kind of application in the OS9 and earlier days. I myself mostly use only iWork because I never had Office and I will say this: when things arrive that .doc or .xls or .ppt, iWork will open and handle MOST of them. In fact, PPT cannot hold a candle to Keynote. BUT if you are accustomed to MS-Office, both iWork and OOO will frustrate you no end. It took me months to make the transition from Office 98 to iWork 2205 (I think, long time ago). MS2011 has gotten fantastic reviews and I have yet to read anything bad about it.
 
I use Openoffice.org, for 2 years now, don't want anything else.... It needs getting used to, but will be worth it.
 
iWork is an excellent platform, ,however....it is a major learning curve if you have never used it before - most people that are impatient get turned off it, because they cannot figure it out right away. If you are impatient and used to office, then stick with office - it is a good product, but in terms of features....I think iWork is far more productive - if you have the time and patience to learn
 
OK, thank you all for the swift replies. I seem to have got the drift that I should stay with what I know best, and that is M$ Office.
I see IC is selling the Student and Home version for R1199. Are there any better prices floating around?
BTW: iLife 11 seems great. I never used '09 so I am not sure what the differences are.
 
Personally I can't stand Office but 2011 actually looks pretty good. Office for Mac 2004 and 2008 were crap. I find the learning curve of Office to be very steep. It's when I started using iWork that I learned about things like Styles which make everything much easier.

Yeah that's about the cheapest you'll find MS Office, legally anyway. Not a bad price. I reckon you should have MS Office and iWork on your Mac.

iLife '11 has minor improvements over iLife '09, not really a huge upgrade IMO.
 
GreGorGy said:
Yes - msbashing. Now while I will gladly trash windoze as the worst OS I have ever not installed, office is a different story. The last version of office for the classic environment - was it Office 98? I can't remember - was by far one of the best products available for that kind of application in the OS9 and earlier days. I myself mostly use only iWork because I never had Office and I will say this: when things arrive that .doc or .xls or .ppt, iWork will open and handle MOST of them. In fact, PPT cannot hold a candle to Keynote. BUT if you are accustomed to MS-Office, both iWork and OOO will frustrate you no end. It took me months to make the transition from Office 98 to iWork 2205 (I think, long time ago). MS2011 has gotten fantastic reviews and I have yet to read anything bad about it.
Click to expand...

Even ol' Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal recommends Office 2011 & the old man is picky, but also very respected. http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20101013/microsoft-office-2011-mac-review/
 
Yes, Office 2011 really is a great upgrade. And not too expensive either. They really improved compatibility with Windows versions (Finally!) and performance, as well as many other issues.

All the rumours say that a new version of iWork is going to launch with the Mac App Store, coming very soon, probably within a month or so - which totally makes sense, so don't buy iWork '09 now. You can download a trial for free BTW.
 
Im a big Fan of opensource apps, but I really think Office 2010 is far superior to anything else I have tried.
 
Thanks guys. I took the plunge and when I was in IC today to purchase a Mini Display Port to DVI Adapter I got a copy M$ Office Mac 2011 and have just installed it but not really looked at it yet.
I did not consider iWork '09 as I believe the iWork '11 will be released in the next few months.
I have iLife '11 installed and last night downloaded a 160+ MB file to update iPhoto. That update was rather quick and I am not sure what the fix corrected. But so far I really love the quality and simplicity of editing photo's. (Jpeg and Raw)
Now to fire up my 26" Samsung.
 
Synaesthesia said:
Yeah that's about the cheapest you'll find MS Office, legally anyway.
Click to expand...
Webantics has it for R780: http://www.webantics.co.za/viewItem.aspx?idProduct=9909

But perhaps there is still VAT on top of that and then you get close to the other guys' prices.

I love Pages. It works the way my brain does. It is the first word processor in which I am using styles to the max.

But it doesn't have an integrated citation manager, like Word does, so unless I hear some details about iWork '11 real soon, I'll have to switch. No, I am not going to buy Endnote instead, thank you,
 
Basilrsa said:
Thanks guys. I took the plunge and when I was in IC today to purchase a Mini Display Port to DVI Adapter I got a copy M$ Office Mac 2011 and have just installed it but not really looked at it yet.
I did not consider iWork '09 as I believe the iWork '11 will be released in the next few months.
I have iLife '11 installed and last night downloaded a 160+ MB file to update iPhoto. That update was rather quick and I am not sure what the fix corrected. But so far I really love the quality and simplicity of editing photo's. (Jpeg and Raw)
Now to fire up my 26" Samsung.
Click to expand...
Nothing quite like some size able real-estate to show off the Mac interface. Good luck and shout if you need help, keep in mind there's ways a native application for everything you need or had on Windows...
 
Holy crap, Outlook 2011 is the biggest piece of rubbish M$ has ever, ever, ever released, I've now had two clients who's mail is unrecoverable seeing as the Outlook 2011 for Mac crashed and the DB rebuild's did sweet f-all.
Stay away!!!!
 
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