[X Newbies] Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[Eugene Lee]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2004 at 01:02:10PM +1100, marina wrote:
: Eugene Lee wrote:
: >
: >1) Running M$ Office 98 in Classic consumes enough system resources
: >(e.g. too much memory or CPU) to significantly slow down your Mac.
: 
: I am thinking of 1GB - one of the apps I'd like to start using on OS 
: X is iListen, which is particularly CPU intensive.
: 
: Would more memory and/or a dual processor help?

My unscientific guess is that if you have an 800 MHz G3 or faster
processor and over 512 MB RAM, that's good enough for M$ Office 98.
Probably a non-issue.

: >2) Running M$ Office 98 in Classic is unstable and crashes often enough
: >to be a problem.
: 
: Yep, and I suppose the only way to find out is to use it and see what 
: happens. Unless there is already a knowledge base I could refer to?

There might be information in Apple's or M$'s knowledge base.  But I've
seen few reports of M$ Office 98 crashing in Classic, probably just as
few as M$ Office crashing in OS 9.  Probably a non-issue.

: >3) You receive documents from newer versions of Office that cannot be
: >read by M$ Office 98.
: 
: Hadn't thought of this, because I was assuming even new versions of 
: Office would have backward compatibility. Wishful thinking?

Yes, wishful thinking.  The term "backward compatibility" usually means
that a new thing can read/write to old things.  But it does not mean
that an old thing can read/write to new things.  It's true that newer
versions of M$ Office can save documents as older file formats.  However
I cannot guarantee for sure that an M$ Office v.X file can be opened by
an M$ Office 98 app.  It's the same problem with opening M$ Office XP
documents in M$ Office 98.

Now if you run into this problem, you can ask the sender to re-save the
document as an older file format.  This is an additional, inconvenient
task that can disrupt your work flow.

: >My suggestion (this will take some work) is to list all of your complex
: >formatting requirements. [...]  And the work you've done will give you
: >the hands-on experience you need to determine which app you prefer to
: >use.
: 
: You are right, and I appreciate your help in defining a well-laid 
: out, scientific methodology.

Apologies if I get too scientific when I try to be thorough.  :-)


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