Alternatives to Office 2008?

fjon

I switched to a mac a few months ago, and so far so good. One of the things I really miss is Office 2007. I've installed Office 2008, but really don't like it. What are the alternatives? I use mainly Excel, and a bit of Word. Please tell me there is something better than Office 2008 there!

monkeyfudge

There is Apple's own iWork suite.

Which contains Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Pages is okay, I haven't tried Numbers and Keynote is brilliant and pisses all over Powerpoint.

BanzaiBk

Neo Office

I've been using it for a while, much better than Office 08' imo. Plus it's free.

Edit: I also use Scrivener and Edit Grid. Fairly inexpensive for how good they are imo.

fjon

Thanks for that. I had considered iWork. Is there anyone out there who uses Numbers frequentl? How does it compare to Excel?
And what's the spreadsheet app like in Neo?

cbr954

fjon wrote: »

I switched to a mac a few months ago, and so far so good. One of the things I really miss is Office 2007. I've installed Office 2008, but really don't like it. What are the alternatives? I use mainly Excel, and a bit of Word. Please tell me there is something better than Office 2008 there!

You can also run office 2007 by using fusion or paralells. I use office 2003 in windows for work stuff that has to be windows compatible.

I have read some bad reports of office 2008, what don't you like about it? I was going to buy it but have been put off by so many bad comments.

BanzaiBk

fjon wrote: »

And what's the spreadsheet app like in Neo?

Not as polished as Excel but works well. I'd take Edit Grid over it any day. E-G has a mobile platform also.

kevteljeur

Open Office Beta is available for Mac. It's more or less that same as NeoOffice, maybe slightly more up to date and polished, but otherwise very similar. Something tells me that it will have more longevity going forward.

fjon

I'm trying iWork 08 for now, and if not happy will try Neo Office or OpenOffice.
So far it's not all that great, but maybe it takes getting used to.

luckat

There's an older version of Office for Mac, which isn't as eccentric as Office 2008; can't remember what it's called, unfortunately.

triple h

I have iWork 08 and Office for mac 2008. I would give Office 8.5 out of 10. But i would give iWork 10 out of 10. I use both on a regular basis. Giving Office a slightly lower score does not stop me from using it. But Credit where credit is due, iWork is very good.

Breezer

iWork is excellent, particularly Keynote, but it does take some getting used to if all you've ever used is Office. Its compatibility with Office is less than fantastic though. It can open Office formats and export to them, but formatting tends to get screwed up. Strange bullet points and oddly sized and positioned text boxes in .ppt files viewed in Keynote, for example. And spacing of .doc and even .rtf files created in Word can be a bit mad in Pages.

Personally, I use iWork for pretty much anything that doesn't require subsequent viewing in Office for Windows. For stuff that other people will view in Office, or that was created in Office and is strangely formatted to the point of being unreadable in iWork, I virtualise Office 2003.

Numbers is probably the most different of all the apps to their Office equivalents though. Your Mac probably came with an iWork trial, so I'd try it first to see if it works for you. If not, virtualising Office 2007 might be the way to go.

ZENER

I preferred the older versions of Office for Mac to be honest. Unfortunately they weren't Universal Binaries so ran under emulation (Rosetta) on Intel Macs but they were the closest to their PC counterparts than the 2008 offering. If you can forgive the slightly slower versions then these may suit you better.

Neo Office is pretty good for a free suite but does have its quirks and Open Office still requires X11 which takes away from the Mac Look & Feel, personally I hate it but I do appreciate its ethics.

iWorks is good but a bit of a departure for anyone who's used to Word or Excel but I have to say I agree with MonkeyFudge - Keynote makes Powerpoint look like an Amstrad gadget compared to a Sony gadget.

I don't understand why Office 2008 takes longer to open on Intel than Office X took on Intel, does anyone know why ?

ZEN

m_stan

no experience of it, but bean might be worth a look.