Word Processing on a Mac

Hey all, I have decided I am finally going to take the plunge and switch. I am so ready for something different. I am ordering a PB 12.1" this week. I have overcome most of my fears, but I still have a few questions for the more experienced users.

The bulk of my professional activities on my computers involve word processing, creating presentations and web research. I am mostly concerned about the compatibility of my documents and being able to share seamlessly. I know the mac office stuff is supposed to take care of that, but I am not too excited about spending another $150 on software which I already have. I would rather spend the money on a bigger hard drive. Additionally, I have heard that mac office is buggy and is not as easy to use as the winblows form. What do all of you who do a lot of word processing use on your mac that works for you day in and day out? Does anyone run office in Virtual PC?

Second, when I am not trying to act smart, I do tons of music and movie downloading. I also take a lot of digital pictures. I understand that mac is ideal for these multimedia pursuits. I am also excited about creating my own dvd's. I have tons of movies and music and some of the movies I download come in some odd formats. I have to use two or three players and my favorite is divx. I know there is a mac version of divx, has anyone used it? Does X have the capability to play just about everything like Winblows media player? I have heard there is a media player for mac, but does it work as well as the w$ version? Additionally, what p2p and downloading programs are the best for mac and offer the most files regularly?

Finally, on the hardware note, I have heard that mac has addressed the heat issue for the 12.1 in the latest incarnation of the pb. is this accurate?

Thanks so much for any help. I can't wait to become a member of the community and a true believer.
t

Tell ya the truth i didnt read all that u had written. But the title should be all i need.

AppleWorks 6.2 comes with your mac great for word processing (its what i use)
MS Office is buyable at apple.com and any apple store.
check versiontracker.com for 'word" or "office" there are a few other word processing apps, (best i know of is "openoffice" its basically ms office but open source)

Appleworks 6.2 will beable to read pretty much any .doc file, there are a few that just dont open and MSWorks or what ever its called rnt compatable at all, not even text edit can open those and get nething worth reading.

Text edit will open most the rest of things, and you can just copy and paste it into appleworks

ok so i gave in feeling like i didnt answer your question...

mac office actually MS said is better than the PC version

Office in VPC on your powerbook would be fine as long as your running win2000 or win98 (98 much faster)

Some people here argue that windows media player is the best out, but they are flat out foolish
head back to versiontracker.com check out "VLC", "real one", "media player", "QuickTime", "Seagul" all of those run various formats. VLC has to be the best, and i think Mac Addikt will back me up on that one.

Also if your making DVDs, and have alot of fun with it, I suggest iLife, my dad actaully makes lots of movies for schools and sporting events and he uses that and loves it. (funny how a father follows in the sons footsteps to self proclaimed computer experts)

For Music playing u just realy need iTunes, love it!
back to versiontracker.com there is "sound studio", and "apple soundtrack" I use both, but one is good enuf (course soundtrack is really sleek)

Poison, Aquisition, Bit Torrent are all excellent programs to download your favorite ...Legal... programs, flies, etc...

Lastly, thank you very much for giving me the honor of answering a question worth answering, lots of people dont bother searching the threads for the answers to their questions.. so again, thank you from Mac-Forums.com

and Welcome aboard!

thank you so much for the input. it was excellent. you have helped to calm some of my most significant fears regarding the "switch". i am so ready for something besides winblows that i am willing to put up with some problems with a new mac and the growing pains that being a new user entails. i just wish i could switch to mac completely and never ever have to use any m$ software again.

any thoughts on the heat issue or should i try the hardware forum?
t

I personally use MS Office on my Mac and it works absolutely seemlessly between my home mac and my office pc. And as graphite side earlier, it's actually a better suite than its comparable windows version (which at the moment is Office2000). I've also heard that MS will be announcing the new Mac Office 2004 sometime in January.

schweet! i will be looking for it.
thanx
t

Well for the heat issue, if you hvnt bought it yet, and you can wait just a little while longer (i dont know how long exactly) maybe like 3 months or so, they will upgrade all the powerbooks, and maybe the heat issue will be better taken care of (though currently its not that bad), and there also will be a greater gap in the iBook g4 and the Powerbooks.

Video - VLC - it plays about everything and is the best media player i've seen yet for any platform.
P2P - Acquisition - far better than any other P2P program to date; the only one for Mac I've used that regularly finds me exactly what I want. iSwipe is a decent program, but too buggy.
Getting um, shall we say, "donated" software is quite difficult on Mac, due mainly to the small user base as compared to Winblows. There are some IRC channels good for that, and a few BitTorrent files you could use as well - but most of the small stuff is worth paying for.
Also, if you wait until at least Jan 16, it will come with the new version of iLife, which is gonna be REALLY cool... If you can't wait, iLife will run you $50 then.
Hope this helps.

StarManta said:

Video - VLC - it plays about everything and is the best media player i've seen yet for any platform.
P2P - Acquisition - far better than any other P2P program to date; the only one for Mac I've used that regularly finds me exactly what I want. iSwipe is a decent program, but too buggy.
Getting um, shall we say, "donated" software is quite difficult on Mac, due mainly to the small user base as compared to Winblows. There are some IRC channels good for that, and a few BitTorrent files you could use as well - but most of the small stuff is worth paying for.
Also, if you wait until at least Jan 16, it will come with the new version of iLife, which is gonna be REALLY cool... If you can't wait, iLife will run you $50 then.
Hope this helps.

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thanks a ton for the great info. i have already been finding some good software. for future use. i have downloaded bittorrent but have no freaking idea how to use it yet. i start the program and nothing happens. anyhoo, being the extremely anal individual that i am, i have not ordered my ibook yet, i have been watching ebay and waiting for mwsf to finish and looking for the best deal possible deal. i want the new ilife, but i am sick of waiting. so i called apple and they said if i ordered my ibook on 1/16, the new ilife would be included. however, if i bought it today, they would send me a coupon for the new ilife which would let me buy it for $20. arrrgh! they are killin' me here! i am just going to have to bite the bullet and order.

i just bought my PB15" and its kick ass,... although i have a question.
Mine didnt come with appleworks 6.2 or w/e? So i have no word processing, except a 30 day trial of MSoffice, which is awesome.... but 150$!!! So was that an option to get the appleworks that i didnt select? thanks.

mattk said:

i just bought my PB15" and its kick ass,... although i have a question.
Mine didnt come with appleworks 6.2 or w/e? So i have no word processing, except a 30 day trial of MSoffice, which is awesome.... but 150$!!! So was that an option to get the appleworks that i didnt select? thanks.

Click to expand...

AppleWorks is only included on "consumer" Macs (iBook, iMac, eMac), not the "professional" versions (Power series). You can get it seperately at any Apple store or online, and I think it's a terrific deal at only $79.00. You can also look at other open-source options such as Open Office (though I have no personal experience with them).

Padawan said:

AppleWorks is only included on "consumer" Macs (iBook, iMac, eMac), not the "professional" versions (Power series). You can get it seperately at any Apple store or online, and I think it's a terrific deal at only $79.00. You can also look at other open-source options such as Open Office (though I have no personal experience with them).

Click to expand...

thanks. Any reccomendations between appleworks or the msoffice for mac?

For P2P - I don't recommend Acquisition. It doesn't get many files at all, and download speeds are horrid. Get Limewire, it takes awhile to load up and seems like a rickety weird program, but it WORKS. Poisoned is ok too.
For Office - I have Appleworks, Office, and Openoffice, and I'd have to say that Office is the best although I use Appleworks for word processing sometimes. Open office is ok, but it takes forever to download, you have to have X11, and it doesn't open fast.
Oh, and Keynote is pretty cool for presentations. It even saves in Powerpoint format.

And BitTorrent isn't the kind of program where you search. You download a .torrent file for the file you want from somewhere else, and then you open it in BitTorrent and it connects to other people to download it.

Here's a picture of OpenOffice: Click Here

I think me and curlynose are going to have to disagree - I've had more success with both number of search results and speed of downloads with Acquisition than LW. Probably should try them both and see which works better for you. (I bet we're just searching for different kinds of files, the kind I search for come up better on Acquistion, the kind he searches for comes up better on LW...)
If you want an example of Torrent files, these are a bunch of DDR songs you get via BitTorrent: DDRAmerica.com

Oh, and I'd recommend trying TextEdit before you pay for any software - the version that comes with Panther (maybe older versions too, not sure) can read simple Word documents.

Yeah, usually I want Christian music which doesn't have that many sources. On Limewire I can get about 20, but Acquisition, I get like 2. On a good day. And say I wanna download something that only has like 2 sources on the entire network, Acquisition always comes up with a waiting message while Limewire always forces a download somehow. Limewire seems to be able to steal bandwidth from third party clients.

Also, look up Tigerlaunch on Google and get it. It's really handy.

And if you want to customize application, folder, etc. icons, go to http://xicons.com, they have alot of good ones.