Mac OSX Tiger Office Suite (Vanity)

[goldstategop]

It seems the choices for Mac OSX Tiger users in the way of office suites are few between. There's AppleWorks 6, Open Office 2.0 that runs on X11 but can be a hassle to set up for all but techies, NeoOffice that's behind OOO.org latest but runs natively in OSX. And of course there's Microsoft's 2004 Office suite in two flavors. Since this is a vanity and given the options, what do Freepers running OSX use for every day productivity work? Recommendations are welcome.

[daviddennis]

I'm curious - what was lame about pages?

I bought iWork and use Pages for my word processing needs. I like being able to set up styles in a way that's a lot cleaner than how Word does it. It's easy and fun with Pages.

I suppose if you think of it as nothing but a bunch of templates, you might be disappointed. I just start from a blank page and format it from there. I have a master set of styles that I import from another document and I'm good to go.

I will admit that it needs a fair amount of processor power, but other than that I prefer it to Word.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Numbers, or whatever they call their spreadsheet. I have Office X (albiet an old version) and it works fine but I really prefer Apple's software.

D

[goldstategop]

The layout in OSX looks different than in Windows. But after getting used to, everything is nicely laid out and the Dock is a place where can put your most commonly used applications. Sort of like the desktop in Windows. Nothing takes up real estate. The mounting of programs from a virtual drive to the application folder is cool. Linux should adopt it. Of course there's no uninstaller for most programs. Just drag and drop the program folders in the Trash when you want to get rid of one. There's no registry to write to. And people just have get used to the software ejecting a CD instead of pressing a button. Apple may have made a mistake in not designing a good office suite. Basically on a top notch operating system, you can add the bells and whistles with some third party software to enhance the functionality. One can't say that of Windows, where poor designed programs either are memory resource hogs or fall short of their potential. So after this long rant, I have to marvel at the irony that Microsoft does a better job with making software for its competitor than for its own operating system!

[mhx]

I use MS Office (actually Office 2003 I think, I haven't upgraded to 2004.) I have iWork, and played around with that a little bit, but it wasn't really compelling enough for me to switch from Office.

[antiRepublicrat]

Microsoft Office for things that need special formatting and foot notes.

Or a real application for that, like InDesign, or FrameMaker if you have a really long document. Word processing has gone downhill since they tried putting high-end layout functions into word processors. They don't do layout well, and the core word processing functionality is over-complicated due to the extra junk.

[Uri’el-2012]

And of course there's Microsoft's 2004 Office suite in two flavors. Since this is a vanity and given the options, what do Freepers running OSX use for every day productivity work? Recommendations are welcome.

1 posted on 12/31/2005 11:29:20 PM MST by goldstategop

After I bought my 17" PowerBook 2 1/2 years ago,
I still used Office on my PC for work related projects.
Then I bought Student & Teacher Office X,
It was great. Later I was interested in VPC
for the last two applications for which there were no Mac versions.

I found I could buy the Upgrade version of MS Office 2004 w/ VPC
and upgrade the Student & Teacher Word.

VPC is a great product but the XP Pro inside the VPC still has issues.

In my work I need maximum portability with the office,
Office 2004 for the Mac was great!

At a job assignment I was using very complicated Office templates,
using the PC version was very difficult.
I brought the work home and loaded it on the Mac and it was a dream.

The aids for managing templates was the most user-friendly,
I have ever encountered. The PC version was user hostile.

I bought iWork, it is OK for newsletters,
but it did not displace Office for the Mac.

[solitas]

Double-clickin' on the 'post' button again, huh? Too much caffeine...?

[Swordmaker]

Double-clickin' on the 'post' button again, huh? Too much caffeine...?

That time of the Morning and New Year, it was probably too much Champagne...

[HangnJudge]

Microsoft Office

I hate to use it but "It just works"

[Question_Assumptions]

I use Microsoft Office on OSX. It's a good product and I have no problem using Microsoft software when it's the best available.

[anonymous_user]

For MySQL (database) stuff on Mac, I've had exellent results with these:

Server Logistics installation package: http://serverlogistics.com/downloads.php

MySQL Cocoa at http://mysql-cocoa.sourceforge.net/

[opticks]

I was using Appleworks, but my job requires compatibility with MS Office (yes, I know $FREE_OFFICE_SUITE is also compatible with MS files...). I actually like the Office 2004 suite for Mac. Much better than similar Windows version.

I haven't really tried Pages or Keynote, but maybe in a few years after upgrading to a MacIntel.

[Tribune7]

I've been using NeoOffice on my home machine. MS is definitely better but Neo does what I need and you can't beat the price.