Another Software Question: Open Office

www.openoffice.org, I believe, is the site.
It's free...does it work well with Macs or does anyone know?

just a free alternative to Microsoft Office.
I will say it's alright. I have been using it a little bit on PC though.
it's just fine if you have to open word office & powerpoint documents which u receive from clients etc.. but workwise, microsoft office is the way to go.

It works really well.. I prefer NeoOffice since it opens a bit quicker and is a little bit friendlier.

it works its a nice program i used it for a while but under my circumstances i went back to office

NeoOffice? I googled it and it's free too...so tell me about it? Is it good as well?


And I want a really good word processing system. One that is fast, decently fantastic and compatible with a Mac and clean...and will transfer easily to a Windows PC for printing.
Should I get open office, neo office, iWork or Microsoft Office. Pros/cons to any of the choices?

It's open office also just not the latest version of openoffice plus it does not have any of the X11 dependencies. So you'll get all your aqua menus etc that you are used to. Eventually they will update it to use open office 2.x code, but until then it uses the previous release of open office as it's base code.

Open Office is the best and most compatible with everything out there.. has a lot of functionality, but has X11 dependencies and is not aquafied. Free. Slow to bootup, but nice once it's open.

Neo office based on older open office code, but is still really nice, and does not have the X11 dependencies, will work with all MS Office files again, save and edit. Free. Not as slow as Oo when booting, but still slow

iWork I've never used so I can't really tell you much of it. But I know it costs.

MS Office, expensive. Opens quickly and is compatible with itself and other file formats, bulky. Is not compatiable with saving in the open office format.

Slow to boot...like how slow?

And...I'm not exactly tech-savvy. What's X11.

And just making sure - The docs transfer fine from Mac to PC?

It just takes awhile to startup.. with Oo it's about 20-40 seconds and NeoOffice is about 20 seconds, so not a long time, but it is a bit slower than MS Office to open up. You will probably not want to use Oo if you are not tech savvy then unless you are good at followign directions and you would like to install X11, which several people on this forum has had a hard time with it so far

So I would use NeoOffice if I was you. You can open PC/Mac/*nix versions of .doc files and save .doc files that can be opened on all also, so you'll not have a problem there. If you save as an Open office document though, you'll need to convert to a word document when transferring over.