Office Software..

Hi,

Just a few questions regarding the office software available for mac os...

I'm currently a windows user and have just bought a C2D imac - I've been looking at them for a while now and decided to take the plunge! Until now, I've been using my PC as workstation (I do a lot of CAD/CAM) as well as more mundane office tasks using MS OFFICE. I really like the idea of mac os - it looks so simple, yet fantastic at the same time! However, I'm just trying to get the feel for any other office suites out there... spreadsheets etc. I've purchased iWork 06 which contains a word processor. However, I do my finances using a spreadsheet and would like to continue doing so!

Apologies for a long first post - I don't normally waffle on!

Any help or advice gratefully received!

Kind regards

Tom* :headphone

There's always Microsoft Office or Open Office if you prefer. Though, MS Office is not universal so it'll be laggy due to Rosetta.

Recommend NeoOffice - Open source and free

There will be a learning curve coming from MS Office, but not as large as the price difference.

Thanks for the replies!

NeoOffice looks great - just nosing around the site now...

Cheers!

Tom*

There are actually quite a number of options:

Per the above posts, NeoOffice is a good suite, and reasonably compatible with MS-Office, but like MS-Office, it is big and slow.

For MS-Word alternatives, consider Abiword, which is a very fast and capable MS-Word replacement. See www.abisource.com. Abiword is small, fast and can read/write .doc files.

You may also wish to consider a web based approach to Office suites. Two notables:
1/ The new Google Apps package for doc/spreadsheet

2/ Thinkfree Office (www.thinkfree.com) which is a free web based suite.

Cheers guys - they all look great,

Thanks for your help,

Tom*