Best free Office program?

[GameGURU]

Ok, I just got a Mac (loving it). But there is one problem, that being that I do not have Office for it. I don't want to pay for it either, even though I am a student and can get a discount. Anyhow, I tried Abiword and it was laggy and messed up, then I looked into openoffice but it only runs in x11 - no no for me.

Anything else worth while out there?

 

[Vybuni]

Openoffice.
Appleworks is better than MS office IMO.

 

[macdude425]

NeoOffice, baby!
http://www.neooffice.org/

Sorry, but I'm not a fan of Appleworks. It just doesn't do anything for me.

 

[GameGURU]

Meh, I have an Intel iMac so no NeoOffice for me

Why haven't they made Openoffice run off of X and not x11?

 

[Qiranworms]

You *could* try Pages. Not free, but iWork (Pages and Keynote) isabiword still much cheaper than Office, especially with the student discount.

By the way, like MS Office and NeoOffice, Abiword is probably not a universal binary, which is probably why its performance isn't so great yet. I've seen it work fine on a Mac Mini. If I used word processors at all, it would be my first choice on any platform, and I do use it to opening the documents people send me. I create all my documents in LaTeX, so the free editors and compilers for most systems I'd ever need to use are obviously in abundance.

Also, there's always Nisus Writer, which, a quick check reveals, is already available as a fat binary. It isn't free, though.

 

[GameGURU]

Thanks, I just checked out Office 2004...every program (save Firefox) runs way fast on this computer, but Office is a little slow. It's pretty annoying but I can manage. I think I might need to get it because I am running out of time, I need to get some stuff done this weekend and I might not have any other choice. I just dont want to buy it and then have Microsoft release a Universal or Intel version.

 

[Qiranworms]

What parts of the Office suite do you need though? If you just need a word processor, and you're going to have to suffer through Rosetta for some time anyway, you might as well still use Abiword. At least when that's universal, it'll still be free.

It would be pretty bad if Microsoft charges the regular upgrade price for the universal binary crossgrade...


As I said last post, iWork is already Intel-ready, but Pages is still quite different in the way it works from other word processors and you might not want to have to adjust to it...

 

[GameGURU]

Well the new Office took a little getting used to, I have no problem using anything different. As a matter of fact that would be nice...

I need the big 3

Word, Powerpoint, and Excel.