Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[Charles Martin]

> From: marina <marina at reliance.it>
>
> I am thinking of buying a new G5 and starting to use OS X seriously,
> and the only thing I'd like to understand before deciding is - what
> would be the best way to avoid using MS Office, and continue sharing
> documents with Windoz users?

EXCELLENT question, well stated.


>  I understand I could keep using my old
> MS Office in "Classic", but, as a general rule, I'd prefer to avoid
> running two operating systems at a time

You're not. "Classic" is an app that acts as a doorway to OS 9. Once 
it's open, OS 9 apps run exactly like they always did -- and when it's 
not in use, Classic sleeps so there's no loss of memory or processing 
power. It's all quite seamless.

> I write a lot, and my requirements include the following:
>
> - opening and using Word templates
> - building TOC's and indexes
> - working with complex tables
> - adding headers, footers, and up to 20 footnotes per page
> - working with long documents (300+ pages), with different page
>    layouts within the same document
> - document statistics (word/character counts)
> - applying user-defined styles
>
> Features I never use in Word, and therefore can easily do without,
> include template libraries, labels, mail merge, dictionaries,
> grammar/spelling tools and multiple-language support.
>
> I have started researching the possible alternatives (as mentioned
> here by Chas, i.e. Appleworks, OpenOffice, Mariner Write, and also
> Nisus Express), and so far, I haven't been able to understand whether
> any of these would give me the features I need, and equal or better
> results/ease of use as Word.
>
Thanks for mentioning my previous options, but those were aimed 
primarily at people who simply need to open/read/print/save basic Word 
documents. For the features you mention that you require AND Word 
compatibility, your options are kind of limited, but I do have some 
suggestions:

1. Upgrade to MS Office for Mac OS X. Now is a particularly good time 
to do this, since you will automatically get the NEXT version of Office 
(Office 2004) for free. I'm not sure what the pricing would be, but 
Office starts at around $150 now (though I think that's the 
Student/Educator version only).

2. There's a product called ThinkFree Office that faithfully emulates 
many (but not all) of Word's features with full compatibility that 
costs about $50. It's a Java app so it runs a bit slowly compared to 
Office itself, but I've been quite impressed with it (though I haven't 
tested most of the "power features" like TOC/Index etc). They have a 
free 30-day trial at http://www.thinkfree.com.

3. OpenOffice at this time requires the X11 environment, which isn't a 
big deal really but can seem awfully alien to Mac users. As near as I 
can tell, it's a complete clone of Office lacking only the "eye candy" 
features of the OS X version. Recently there has been some success at 
porting KOffice (another "clone" of Office done by the KDE community) 
to native OS X, so perhaps in six months/a year we'll have a full-scale 
competitor to Office.

Frankly, I think your best bet is to stick with MS Office proper, at 
least for now. When KOffice reaches maturation or Apple unleashes 
AppleWorks 7 (so they say), perhaps that will be a different story.

_Chas_

Mnemonic of the Year: ABBA -- Anybody But Bush Again.
http://www.abbaparty.com