a real alternative to MS-office
 

Just had some unexpected crashes again using MS-Word (happens periodically; actually every person I know using OS X has this problem). So I'm writing in a somewhat annoyed mood.
I'd like to have a real alternative offering me the multitude of possibilities of MS-Office, but also the chance to exchange files with MS-Users (after all it's still a Gates World). If there was such a program I'd switch in no-time.
I was disappointed to see that a native OS X version of OpenOffice will be available presumably not before 2006 (don't think I'm any use to the developers :rolleyes: ).
Why doesn't Apple put more efforts in creating an Office alternative (what happens if MS stops developing for Apple anyway? I've always wondered why they develop for a minority like us). Couldn't AppleWorks serve as a basis in such developments? Apple as a marketing phenomenon could make a majority of users switch to a Mac-solution if they really wanted to. Or?

:D Well then you are the first person now (... what do you mean with "any frequent"). Just do a google search and you will see that it seems to be a *very* widespread phenomenon and not specific to me and my colleagues (we already tried all the suggestions found in the forums).

Strange.. I have 250 OS X boxes under my care, all of which have Word X. I have received very few calls complaining about crashing (I can count them all on 1 hand) and in all instances I fixed them. And most of these people use Word everyday, all day for grants, notes, publications, patient record entries, transcription, etc,...

Then this only means that you are an outstanding system administrator. Our one unfortunately uses a PC and refuses to help with Macs.
Just a couple of examples that other people seem to have problems too:
http://blogs.osafoundation.org/mitch/000406.html
http://manila.mems.rice.edu/behr/2002/10/01
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...20326010620991

I'm not saying that Word is useless. I use it every day too. But when it has these crash-phases (considering that it costs a fortune) it gets annoying.

I do not now, nor have I ever had, Word on my system. I'm a satisfied DataViz MacLinkPlus user. I used to convert them all to MacWrite Pro format, then I went through a WordPerfect 3 phase, and now I change them all to AppleWorks (WP).

I suppose you could do the same for Excel (although unlike Word, Excel pleases me and I use it so I can't say for certain).

For what is worth:

Word rarely crashed on me, before I upgraded to Panther. Since then, the last four days, Word has crashed on each of my machines at least once. Frequent, perhaps. Coincidence, perhaps. Annoying, it's getting there. It seems random at this point, but I am certainly keeping my eye on it.

FYI: Panther (clean install); Word X.1.5 (freshly installed and then updated); three Macs--450 MHz Cube, 15" TiBook (667 MHz), 12" Powerbook (1 GHz). No system hacks.

My 2¢.

Best,
darin

Re: a real alternative to MS-office
 

As was I... When I switched to Mac, they were anticipating starting the native OS X beta with the next release (version 1.1 now postponed till version 2.0), then suddenly changed to not until 2006. Though I understand their reasoning (functionality first).

That doesn't mean you can't use it though... if you don't mind running it in X11, there is an X11 version for Mac. And also a nice little OS X launcher panel called CoooL or something is out there too.

And actually the native OS X version would probably come alot faster if there were more people running the mac X11 version and providing feedback.

Ok there are a couple of issues Office version and Alernatives
 

RE: Ok there are a couple of issues 1) Office version and 2) Alernatives:

First of all Not every version of Office X is Stable.

1) There is version 10.0 10.1 10.12, 10.13, 10.14 and 10.15.
You have to upgrade to .12 to get to .15. Like all Patches sometimes they go awry.

Version 10.15 is pretty Cool (I believe 10.0 and 10.13 was quite problematic).

Please note when you check Get Info After a Patch the information does not change until after a reboot (I do not know why).

2) Office Alternatives: You mention word (you do not mention if you need the other Office Apps). Real Alternative depends on many factors (Obviously MS trys there best to make this tough [even if you not like MS why would they want to help]).

A) Do you need Basic formatting Capabilty e.g. Font, Line Breaks, Page Breaks, Headers, Graphics etc.

B) Or Do you need Tables, Macro Support, And Extra Complicated Documents.

C) Are you looking for Application that does baic word documents (A) and is somthing different e.g. Appleworks, Mariner Write, Nisus Writer, Simple Text in Panther, Yup it does word. Hint. Hint:) and there is one or two other Word Capable programs that flew out of my Head.

D) Or Are you looking for an Office/Word Replacement that closely Mimics Office and supports almost every feature. There is as of yet no perfect solution. And some solutions require installing fun, but Additional software that comes with it aka Open Source Libaries e.g. Fink or X11 etc.

There is: Think Free Office, Star Office, and.... I forgotten a few of them. All of these products are a work in progress. All sort follow the Linux Model repackaging Open Source Office Products into a supported and better Product. They are neither faster nor more stable then office X and support only "most" Features of most modules. They offer more complete support then Basic Word funtionality (A) but not everything. There is not yet an Office Killer, Yet.

All the products have a Matrix telling your what there products can and can not do. And All of them cost much less or are Free. e.g. Think free is $49 I believe.

P.S. My Hint Hint, before was that I think, and Rumor has it that Apple (since no one else has) is quietly tryng to Build a viable Office Killer.

It Started with Safari and IE. Keynote was next aka Power point but better.
Now Simple Text can Open and Save Word Documents. [Edit] Missing Much, Apparently not a spell checker:) You see the trend it seems like Apple is Gearing up to compete with Office.

I had thought Apple would take one of the Open Source Projects like they did with Safari and make it Great. They may be quietly doing that.... There have onlly been very loose rumors.

If I were Apple I would be working on Multiple Strategies at the same time. Writing Software is Tough and slow and not necessarily Scientific or Linear. Some Projects do not bare the fruit they were supposed to. Thus They may be quietly working Module by Module while also trying to improve on one of the exisitng projects Like Star Office etc.

If you're looking for a really, really, really nice word processor that can read Word files, check out Nisus Writer Express:

www.nisus.com

Being very picky here...

TextEdit does have a spell checker. :D

Back to the question at hand...

In my experience, I can live without Word for the most part. There are plenty of alternatives that provide enough functionality that I don't have to use Word. Times I get into trouble is when I have to deal with complex Word documents ( something beyond your simple formatting such as macros, table of contents, etc )

As far as having an application or a suite of applications that can totally replace Word and Office... We still have ways to go.

I can only Vouch for Word on two Panther systems so far
 

I can only Vouch for Word on two Panther systems so far.....


It is version 10.15.

Tell me more about NISUS
 

Mikey-San,

I would really like to hear more about your experience with Nisus Writer.

I have been using Word for more than a decade, but am bothered by a number of shortcomings that I can’t find a way around. So I’m looking for an alternative, but it has to be really GREAT. And it cannot have any compatibility problems.

How would you compare Nisus to Word?

With best regards,
ArcticStones

So why hasn't he been fired yet?

I use Office 2004 all day every day and love it. Really a lot nicer than 2003 (latest Windows version). On the other hand I stuck a Windows user in front of it on Monday and she was able to use advanced functions instantly, proving my theory that it doesn't matter if we migrate a few users to Macs.

I've never had any issue at all with any of the Office 2004 products. Never tried Office X.

Take a look at Mariner Write also, which is as near as Word 5.1 as I can think of. It reads and writes Microsoft Word documents.

They also provide Mariner Calc which handles Excel files.

Eh, "word processors" are overrated anyway. I just use TextEdit, mark up the formatting with HTML (if needed), open it in Safari or Firefox and save it as a PDF. You'd be surprised how well it works! :cool:

NeoOfficeJ
 

I rarely use Office or related programs to make my documents. I always use LaTeX and other such tools and create PDF. However, I still use an office program suite for the many .doc, .xls, .ppt files I receive. I was using OpenOffice with X11 along with the font fix suggested by a poster in MacOSXhints web site. It comes with a double clickable installer and a double clickable program starter. You can associate your Office files witht the Start OpenOffice.org.app application and all files will open like being opened by a native application. But the interface would like Windows!

Now, I switched to NeoOfficeJ which is based on OpenOffice entirely and its fantastic. Nearly perfect except for a tiny bug that occurs for me that I have to set the page format as A4 in the page format menu for each file open before I print them.

http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php

I also use Office X at my school machine which does not crash as mentioned here.

Forgot to mention! NeoOfficeJ may be a bit sluggish to start on low end Macs...

love word x as well..no crashes thus far

neoOffice Seems pretty damn nice no X11 same code base
 

NeoOffice Seems pretty damn nice no with the benefit of no X11, same code base as the other projects.

I don't crash in Word X 2004. You might want to run a utility on your fonts, corrupted fonts can kill Word and other programs. Better do it now in case you switch to a new word processor and have the same bad fonts crash it too.

I used Appleworks, Open Office in X11, Think Free Office, then NeoOffice for awhile, but was never able to get full compatibility with some Office files -- especially PowerPoint, but Word also. I also kept Maclink Plus updated for years until v. 13. This year I finally got Office 2004 and it works very well. The Student-edition for $150 / 3 users is a steal, IMO. Just get it and be sure to upgrade; it helped with speed issues a lot.

Well, I’ve paid the money for Office 04 and don’t mind paying for upgrades. I really don’t have major problems with stability either. An occasional crash, but I rarely lose any text.

No, my objection is that Word is lacking (as far as I know) the ability to plug in good dictionaries (Webster’s or Oxford), to replace the abominably poor word lists with which Microsoft has equipped it.

In addition Word is a mastodont of an application. It’s loaded with functions I don’t want that really get in the way. And after 10 years I still find it "user hostile".

To top it off, the GUI is sinfully ugly. And that’s not and issue of "eye candy"! The beauty of Apple’s applications is a daily motivator; MS Word is a de-motivator...

I am truly astonished that Microsoft, with their almost unlimited human and financial resources, have not managed to come up with something better.

Best regards,
ArcticStones