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tether · Nov 22, 2005, 07:48 PM

i'd like to get hold of ms word cheap. there's currently a deal at mac.com where if you buy a mac, and ms office at the same time, you can get a partial rebate. i bought a powerbook a few weeks ago but the deal is that you have to have bought it after 19 november - what do you think the chances are of apple allowing me the deal.

or, someone i know can sell me an ms office which he bought two years ago. have there been many changes in the last two years - would i be missing out on any features etc? (he bought it more or less exactly two years ago - whatever version was selling then)

or, anybody got any ideas on how i could get my mitts on a copy of said Word - cheap or free?

kcmac · Nov 22, 2005, 08:44 PM

I work for a company where we can buy home licenses for MS products. We can purchase office for the Mac for $20.

brettcamp · Nov 23, 2005, 10:30 PM

Before laying out any money for Word, why not at least try the open source NeoOffice/J which lets you read and exchange files in MS Office formats?

Cadaver · Nov 23, 2005, 11:48 PM

You could also install OpenOffice as an X11 application. Not exactly Mac-like, but it'll work.

dru · Nov 24, 2005, 06:05 PM

You could try ebay? Word X works fine on Tiger.

EmmEff · Nov 24, 2005, 06:28 PM

There's also AbiWord for OS X that looks nice, but I've heard it's been unstable. Not sure if this is still true with the latest version. And don't forget about iWork.

ghporter · Nov 24, 2005, 08:37 PM

If you're a college student, your school may have a deal with Microsoft like mine does: it costs about $15 for Office for Mac through the school.

Or you could go with NeoOffice, OpenOffice, or one of the other free packages-they all seem to be just as functional as Word for around 95% of what Word does, and that remaining 5% is pretty much out of the realm of most people's needs.

threestain · Nov 25, 2005, 07:02 AM

abiword is reasonably stable, but its formatting of received documents really does need some work unfortunately

EmmEff · Nov 25, 2005, 11:23 AM

That's too bad... it looks like a great app. Maybe in a few years, it'll be usable as a basic word processor.

andgarden · Nov 25, 2005, 03:30 PM

"Or you could go with NeoOffice, OpenOffice, or one of the other free packages-they all seem to be just as functional as Word for around 95% of what Word does, and that remaining 5% is pretty much out of the realm of most people's needs."

They're also pretty good at making it feel like you're running a Windows 95 app through emulation on an original ibook. . .

Blue Flame · Nov 25, 2005, 04:46 PM

Mellel is another option that people have liked.

tether · Nov 30, 2005, 02:33 PM

i only have a dial up connection so want to make sure i have the best bet before i start trying to download or find a broadband connection to download an app. - which would be the best bet in terms of compatibility with MS Word? i opened a Word doc in a few applications and no app got all the formatting - the best i got was everything except italics.

would this be the right link for openoffice:?

http://www.openoffice.org/product/writer.html

can't seem to find the neooffice link

JKT · 05:24 PM

For the various OpenOffice.org flavours, you are definitely best off getting NeoOffice. The stable version is NeoOffice/J 1.1 with Patch 3 (Java 1.4.2) installed and is based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4. The current development version (1.2 Alpha) is based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 and allows you to open the OpenDocument format files that OpenOffice.org 2.0 creates.

If you visit the support forums at the trinity.neooffice.org website, as you are on dial-up you can ask to have someone mail you a CD of both the stable and development versions (if you are in the UK, you can PM me here at MacNN and I will endeavour to send you a CD myself). It will either be free or cost you the postage and packaging.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 for X11 is the only stable version of OpenOffice.org. The current version of OpenOffice.org 2.0 for X11 is still a release candidate and I wouldn't rely on it for my work until it comes out of RC status. OpenOffice.org 2.0 has better compatibility with MS Office formats, but it isn't significant unless you are an Excel power user.

FWIW, there are some issues with formatting when opening MS Office docs in OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice, especially when there are multi-page tables and/or when there are equations in the document. Saying that, it is still very good compatibility - much better than AbiWord, TextEdit or Pages. If you absolutely must have 99% compatibility, you will have to get MS Office 2004.

FWIW, NeoOffice also needn't look too much like a Win 95 app:

NeoOffice with the CrystalPlus toolbar icon set applied (100KB)

JKT · Nov 30, 2005, 05:21 PM

Originally Posted by andgarden

They're also pretty good at making it feel like you're running a Windows 95 app through emulation on an original ibook. . .

The latest version of NeoOffice is a significantly better performer than the NeoOffice/J 1.1 version. If you are unwilling to use the NeoOffice 1.2 alpha, but do use NeoOffice/J 1.1, I highly recommend downloading and installing Patch 3 with Java 1.4.x (note, you need to be running 10.3 or higher to be able to use this patch). It provides the same speed boosts as the 1.2 alpha.

brettcamp · Dec 1, 2005, 02:35 AM

FWIW, NeoOffice also needn't look too much like a Win 95 app:

NeoOffice with the CrystalPlus toolbar icon set applied (100KB)

Say, that looks pretty snazzy! Where do you download it?

JKT · Dec 1, 2005, 07:20 AM

It is a little complicated to get installed at the moment - you need to first have NeoIconer and ImageMagick v5.7 (both CLI apps) installed. You then run NeoIconer from Terminal, after first hand editing a configuration file so that it points to your new toolbar icon set, and it will update your toolbar icons for you. Even then there are some cosmetic and usability issues (not all icons are replaced and if you try to edit the icons for a particular function, you get a black box instead).

We trinity folks are hoping to make it easier for people to do this without having to install CLI apps but we aren't ready yet... however, if you aren't afraid of CLI apps, visit the trinity development forum and have a look through the GUI Icon Redesign thread and the NeoIconer with NeoOffice Alpha 1.2 thread to find out more.

Warning: if you use TeXShop at all, then it will not be possible to use NeoIconer as you have to have the latest version (6.x) of ImageMagick installed for TexShop and NeoIconer doesn't work with that version.

threestain · Dec 1, 2005, 12:57 PM

why oh why can't you copy and paste from mellel to safari?

ridiculous!

tether · Dec 1, 2005, 03:21 PM

thanks for those replies, and thanks for offers of sending me copies of neooffice. i think i've located a cheap second hand copy of ms office - if it doesnt work out i'll be back
cheers.