[X Newbies] Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[Eugene Lee]

On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 09:56:51PM +1100, marina wrote:
: Eugene Lee wrote:
: >
: >If you plan to share .doc files to Windoze users so that they can easily
: >edit the content, your safest best is to (unfortunately) buy M$ Office.
: >You can save money by buying the Student and Teacher Edition.  Also, if
: >you attend (or know someone who attends) a university that has a site
: >license for M$ Office, the prices are even cheaper.
: 
: I already have a Mac version of MSOffice, and I've been sharing files 
: with Windoz users since 1998 (I probably forgot to mention I am new 
: to OS X, but not to Mac's...?)
: 
: Now what you say though... makes me realise I have probably 
: misunderstood something :-)

Nah, not a misunderstanding.  Just a difference of viewpoints.  People
underestimate the effort required to communicate with other people.
It's not easy being green!

: I am assuming I will be able to run my current copy of MSOffice for 
: Mac as a Classic app under OS X (for those rare circumstances where I 
: need to share a file with Windoz users, so that they can edit),

Yep, you can still do this.

: and 
: would like to use something different, i.e. possibly a Mac OS X 
: native application, for all my other word processing tasks. Are you 
: saying that I will not be able to do this, and will need to buy the 
: new version of MSOffice *for Mac OS X*?

Again, that depends on your word processing tasks.  If you plan to KEEP
your documents to yourself, there's no need for you to buy M$ Office v.X
and you can check out other alternative apps.

If you plan to SHARE your documents with other people so that they can
EDIT them (assuming that many of these other people are Windoze users),
use of lots of M$ Office features, and avoid as much as possible any
compatibility problems with 3rd-party Word .doc reading/writing, then
you might have the valid need to buy M$ Office v.X.

Regarding other 3rd-party word processing apps, I have no idea how well
they read/write Word documents.  But I think it's more important to
first find out your needs, current and future.  Only after this step can
you look at what word processing apps that best fit your needs.


-- 
Eugene Lee
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/