diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/01.01.05/Fri/neooffice.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/01.01.05/Fri/neooffice.txt | 1 |
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/01.01.05/Fri/neooffice.txt b/old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/01.01.05/Fri/neooffice.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..24c296d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/01.01.05/Fri/neooffice.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Mac users are traditionally not big fans of Microsoft and any die-hard Mac fan can argue until they're blue in the face that it's possible to get by without using MS products.
But there is one field in which Microsoft software unquestionably dominates -- Office documents. However [competition in the Office field is heating up][1] and more robust alternatives to the MS Office suite are now available.
The most obvious alternative to office is [OpenOffice.org][3], but so far there hasn't been a true native Mac port. As it stands now, there is an OS X port but it requires the X11 windowing system to be installed.
However, if you're like me and you don't want to mess with X11, there is another alternative -- [NeoOffice][2]. NeoOffice is based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, but it incorporates many native Mac features like Aqua menus, OS X fonts and integration with Apple's mail.app.
Die-hard Mac fans will no doubt love the native Aqua look and feel and NeoOffice does a good job adhering to the Apple UI guidelines. In short, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck, even it it uses Java here and there to take advantage of Aqua widgets.
Naturally NeoOffice offers the full set of applications you'd expect in an office suite (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs) and it can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
So how does it stand up in everyday use?
Well it depends on what your needs are. For most people the word processing app, Writer, will ably do just about anything you want and exports to MS .doc files with ease.
As for reading MS Office files from other people, Writer handled everything I threw at, but some people have reported problems with complex double column formats with embedded images and the like.
Also note that at this time Writer does not support the new MS Word format .docx, but a recent update to the NeoOffice homepage says that .docx support will be available later this quarter.
If for some reason you need to embed video or other multimedia materials in your documents, you'll want to look elsewhere since those features haven't been implemented yet NeoOffice.
I also tested Calc, NeoOffice's spreadsheet program and found it to be slightly less stable (it crashed once while importing a very very large .csv file), but it did an excellent job of importing Ms Excel files.
So can NeoOffice replace MS Office? I would say yes for the casual user like myself. If you regularly have to deal with complex MS Office documents your mileage may vary.
[2]: http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php "NeoOffice"
[3]: http://www.openoffice.org/ "OpenOffice.org"
[1]: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/software/0,72403-0.html?tw=wn_index_2 "MS Fights to Own Your Office Docs"
\ No newline at end of file |