10 Comments

Time to drop Microsoft Office?

December 5, 2006 by in Apple,Tech with 10 Comments

Much to my dismay, the realization that Office 2007 documents would be incompatible with the current Microsoft Office 2004 edition (OS X) was very much disappointing. Should we be at all surprised that the next major release of Office would force OS X users to upgrade?

With the hefty price tag demanded by the Office software suite, it’s time for non-corporate users to look elsewhere for alternatives. One viable route to take would be to turn towards OpenOffice. According to Novell, support for the new document format will be released in a month or two.

Hesitant to adopt OpenOffice rather than the tried and true Microsoft office applications? OS X users may want to check out NeoOffice – an OS X port of the OpenOffice suite.

Windows and OS X users alike may want to consider looking at open source alternatives rather than shelling out hundreds of dollars for an application suite that chooses to lock certain users out. I know what I’ll be using when the 2007 edition is well circulated on the net. What will you be using?


  • Guy

    I do believe that having a new file format for Office 2007 documents is dumb (they better have a good reason).

    I’ve been using it for a few weeks though, and most of the time, I just save the files as “Office 97-2003″ type (.doc) instead of the new .docx, just so I don’t compatibility issues if I need to distribute or use the file elsewhere.

    However, there is compatibility pack you can add on to Office 2003 (not sure if theres a mac version available yet) so that you can save and read the new .docx format, which is available here:

    http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/converter.mspx

    But yes, I believe many mac users may switch if MS doesn’t add a compatibility pack for Office 2004 for mac.

    Guy

  • Jeffy

    Anyone finding the NeoOffice download not working can find it here:
    http://downloads.vnunet.com/download/business%20office/neooffice+2.0+aqua+beta+3/_36853.html

  • Jeffy

    Sorry to double post but just to let you know that link I just posted is only for Intel Macs…gonna go search for a PPC mirror…

  • Thrall

    Er…I’ve never used Office. I use open office and Abiword in windows..I have no use to pay a fortune for them, when all I need to do is write essay’s, etc.

  • Jeffy
  • robg

    The Office folks have announced that there will be free converters available for the *current* version of Office for Mac (which I take it to mean Office 2004) to handle the new XML file format. See this news bit for the (scant) details:

    http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/08/07/msuniversal/index.php

    -rob.

  • http://phil.electricweekend.com Phil Bowell

    I will probably end up using the latest version of iWork if this is the case, after my diss has been written I won’t have much need for Word etc.

  • http://thisyear.ca stashuk

    have people tried NeoOffice? I recently made the switch to a MacBook and put NeoOffice on but haven’t really put it through it’s paces yet. I’m wondering how stable it is and how well it deals with doc’s from Word and elsewhere.

  • http://screenager.be/blog Sven

    NeoOffice is very buggy

  • http://www.mahmoudkassem.com Mahmoud

    OpenOffice/NeoOffice is very powerful, I like the Writer more than MS Office Word. I think that by reporting the bugs you find and the features you would like to see, the product will get much better.

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