Mac version of OpenOffice goes Beta
Microsoft Office is the standard, and it's an expensive standard. Now, there is finally an alternative! NeoOffice/J is the Mac OS X version of OpenOffice, an open-source office package originally developed by Sun Microsystems. This version runs natively under OS X without the need for X11.I downloaded the beta release of NeoOffice and gave it a test drive. I was surprised that the minimum system requirements included 512 MB of RAM... that seemed a little steep to me (although not a problem).
I confirmed that it would let me open and edit a few Word documents and an Excel spreadsheet I use to manage some aspects of my personal finances. All worked flawlessly.
My biggest gripe is that NeoOffice does not look or behave like a Mac application. It uses all of its own graphical widgets, and looks like a Windows 3.1 version of Word. When you pull up the dialog box to open a file, it doesn't use any of the OS X Navigation services, and is not as pleasant of an experience.
In contrast, the Mac team at Microsoft has created a really great Mac-native experience in the Office 2004 product... but you get what you pay for.
If you need Microsoft compatability but don't want to drop a lot of dough to get it, NeoOffice is the ticket! After all, it's free.
Dowload it here.
Update: June 22, 2005: NeoOffice/J 1.1 has now been officially released! You can still use the above link to download the latest version.
posted by Paul Wren at 9:39 AM | perma link 
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