[D'Espice]

Hi everybody,

I am about to get my iBook this week so I'm starting to have some questions I need answers for In this particular case, it's about AppleWorks vs. Office:mac v. X. I already bought the SE of Office about a year ago and used it on my G4 PowerMac before I eventually sold it. I have never ever used AppleWorks, I did however like ClarisWorks 4 that I used quite a lot on my PowerBook 1400 w/ OS 8.6. Anyhow, here's the situation:

My hardware:
I bought a 12" iBook, 1.2 GHz CPU and 256MB of RAM. I don't have any more money so getting more RAM is not an option.

My requirements:
I am an American culture and literature major in Munich, Germany and I need this iBook mainly for writing papers and essays. Infact, that's what I'll be doing 99% of the time. Besides that, I'll be using it for email, web browsing, music (iPod) and digital images (iPhoto and some Photoshop every now and then, nothing too fancy tho). But like I said, 99% of the time I'll be writing papers, essays and taking notes (not in class but library since our faculty only has a reference library).
I remember Office being incredibly sluggish on my G4/450 with 768MB of RAM. I was infact so slow that working with it was impossible. Even though I disabled the background spell & grammar check, it still took several seconds for something I just typed to appear on the screen. It was also surprisingly unstable (I have absolutely no recollection of Office 98 ever crasing on my old PowerBook) and literally crashed every time I used it. Not just every now and then but always. Sometimes even when I had it running in the background, not using it at all it just crashed.

Needless to say that this kind of behavior is not acceptable. I need my application to be stable and not have me worrying about saving documents all the time - I'm a notoriuos non-saver. Also needless to say that the performance just described is not acceptable either.

The requirements for papers and essays should be something even an editor will be capable of doing. Justify, indention of the first line in every paragraph, Times New Roman 12pt and the possibility to print. What I also need is an automatic background spell-check since every now and then I have some typos like 'adn' instead of 'and' or 'teh' instead of 'the'. I want the application to fix that kind of errors by itself. I do not need a grammar check though, these usually confuse me. I also need the spell-check to be English and that's the thing. Since I live in Germany, I bought the German version of Office v. X. I know that OS X is multilingual but what about Office v. X? Does it at least have an English dictionary I can use? And how about AppleWorks? Since I bought my iBook in Germany as well, I'll probably be getting the German version of AppleWorks - is that multilingual or is it not?

My options:
My options are basically AppleWorks that comes with my iBook and Office that I already bought. I cannot spend any money so Office 2004 is not an option. Also, I read on Mactopia that min. system requirements state 512MB of RAM
I am of course open for any other applications that are free, like OpenOffice. The thing about OpenOffice is tho that I don't like it. I've been running OpenOffice and even StarOffice for years on my Linux box, I even ran StarOffice on my OS/2 years ago - I simply don't like it. It's slow, it's bloated and quite frankly I never quite got used to it. I also don't like the fact that while waiting for OpenOffice/StarOffice to load, I can get a cup of coffee. Are there any other free applications that I should take a look at? Compatibility might not be an issue now, but I would like to have the option of sharing my documents with other users.


The bottom line is: Will AppleWorks do the job? My papers are usually between 2 and 10 pages long, no pictures or spreadsheets, nothing fancy at all. Will I get along with AppleWorks or not? And if not, how good (and by good I mean both, fast and stable) will Office v. X run on said iBook? Will I be sitting in the library, cursing and running around because it just crashed again or will I be pleasently surprised? Mind you, I don't need any other of the Office applications besides maybe Excel. I certainly don't need Entourage (no junk filter) or anything else so I would pretty much like to only install what I really need.

[Millennium]

If you're really strapped for cash, AppleWorks will get the job done, and it's actually reasonably fast and stable. However, I can't say the experience will be enjoyable.

This is a great shame. I was an avid AppleWorks user back in the OS9 days, and even the OSX days till quite recently. Back in v4 and v5 (and even v6, to a somewhat lesser extent) it was the best thing going. And it got me through college well enough, even in the early OSX days

However, the original port of AppleWorks to OSX was so bad that it has permanently sullied Carbon's reputation. It's literally the original Bad Carbon Port, and it hasn't changed very much since then. Not enough to solve most of the problems. It's a pity that such a great app could sink so low. It's not the only time this has happened (look at Norton Utilities), but it was the first, and it could well be the most extreme case.

It breaks my heart, but I recently switched to Nisus Writer Express for word processing. I'm still looking for a good spreadsheet replacement.

[hyperb0le]

I can't think of any reason why AppleWorks would not be perfectly fine. In fact, I bet TextEdit would be fine for basic papers.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by hyperb0le:
I can't think of any reason why AppleWorks would not be perfectly fine. In fact, I bet TextEdit would be fine for basic papers.

It'll get the job done. It got the job done for me in school, and I said as much. But an enjoyable experience is not what I would have called it. Certainly not like it had been on OS9.

When Apple actually puts some effort into AppleWorks, then we'll talk. Till then, they are guilty of no less than taking one of the greatest apps on the platform and turning it into a bad joke.

[D'Espice]

Well that's the point. If it'll get the job done without crashing or being slow it's still better than Office that may be capable of doing more and that has way more features but is slow and unstable. But like I said, I have no idea how fast it'll be on a 1.2 GHz G4 with 256MB of RAM

[threestain]

Have you tried neooffice/j ? Its a lot faster than open office, plus has some nice aqua stuff now too. can't find link, too lazy!

[wataru]

Originally posted by threestain:
Have you tried neooffice/j ? Its a lot faster than open office, plus has some nice aqua stuff now too. can't find link, too lazy!

Exactly
http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php

Also check out the Aqua menu patch.

[D'Espice]

Like I said, I don't like OpenOffice. Plus I've heard that NeoOffice/J was supposed to be a lot slower than OpenOffice/X11. I mean it's JAVA and as far as I remember, Java was horribly slow on my G4.

[wataru]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Like I said, I don't like OpenOffice. Plus I've heard that NeoOffice/J was supposed to be a lot slower than OpenOffice/X11. I mean it's JAVA and as far as I remember, Java was horribly slow on my G4.

You clearly don't know much about NeoOffice/J. Why don't you actually try it, since it's free?

NeoOffice/J uses Java very minimally, and if there is a speed hit it is a) tiny, and b) well worth the gain in functionality.

[D'Espice]

Well there's still the point that I have been using OpenOffice for years, I have even been using StarOffice for years (even back in my OS/2 days) and I don't like it.

[Jonesy]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Like I said, I don't like OpenOffice. Plus I've heard that NeoOffice/J was supposed to be a lot slower than OpenOffice/X11. I mean it's JAVA and as far as I remember, Java was horribly slow on my G4.

The latest version of NeoOffice/J is great. Still an Alpha but a huge improvement on previous versions. If you used older versions I think you will be pleased with the changes.
Initial startup time is the only minor delay. Much better than OpenOffice last time I used it. The Aqua menu patch is also very good. Makes it a little more Mac-like. Well worth the download.

[wataru]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Well there's still the point that I have been using OpenOffice for years, I have even been using StarOffice for years (even back in my OS/2 days) and I don't like it.

Ok, it still doesn't sound like you've actually used NeoOffice/J, but fine. How about Abiword?

By the way, "OpenOffice" is not the same thing as OpenOffice.org. We are talking about OpenOffice.org.

By the way, you're nuts not to get more RAM.

[D'Espice]

Originally posted by wataru:
By the way, you're nuts not to get more RAM.

I simply can't afford it right now - buying more RAM would result in me not having money for food for the next month.
And you're right, I have not actually tried NeoOffice/J yet and I do know we're talking about OpenOffice.org. I did not know tho that there's a difference between OpenOffice (formerly known as StarOffice) and OpenOffice.org (formerly also known as StarOffice)

[Shades of Gray]

If you are using 99% for academic writing, then consider two very good alternatives: Mellel ($39.95) and Nisus Writer Express (%59.95). At their present stage, Mellel is further along, but both are very capable programs. I use both, and find them well suited to my use (theological papers with English as primary and Greek, Hebrew, and German as secondary languages).

Mellel will be switching to XML as its primary format in the next major release, but saves in RTF as well as its own format.

NWE saves primarily as RTF.

Both are capable of importing Word files (if there isn't any drawing layer stuff).

[wataru]

My ex swears by Mellel. It's a nice app, but not free.

[D'Espice]

Exactly. Before I invest any money in software I may have to get more RAM. I'm getting the impression that people urge me to do that although I'm still hoping that 256MB of RAM will be enough for my needs - word processing (from the looks of it, AppleWorks), webbrowsing and email.

I do have one more concern tho. I read somewhere else that AppleWorks does not have a background spell checker. As already mentioned in my requirements I need that background checker since I tend to mistype words like adn/and or teh/the. So is that actually correct? Is there really no background spell checker in AppleWorks?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Exactly. Before I invest any money in software I may have to get more RAM. I'm getting the impression that people urge me to do that although I'm still hoping that 256MB of RAM will be enough for my needs - word processing (from the looks of it, AppleWorks), webbrowsing and email.

256 will do nicely, if that's what you're using the computer to do.

I do have one more concern tho. I read somewhere else that AppleWorks does not have a background spell checker. As already mentioned in my requirements I need that background checker since I tend to mistype words like adn/and or teh/the. So is that actually correct? Is there really no background spell checker in AppleWorks?

What do you mean by "background spell checker"? Are you talking about a Cocoa-style checker which highlights misspelled words as you type them? In that case, no; AppleWorks does not have that.

However, AppleWorks does have a spell checker, and it's actually quite a nice one. You just have to run it manually.

[threestain]

if there is such an issue with money, have a proper play with neooffice/j. Plus at least that way you'll see whether you need more RAM (probably a definite in my book) or can manage without

[D'Espice]

Originally posted by Millennium:
What do you mean by "background spell checker"? Are you talking about a Cocoa-style checker which highlights misspelled words as you type them? In that case, no; AppleWorks does not have that.

However, AppleWorks does have a spell checker, and it's actually quite a nice one. You just have to run it manually.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Not only highlight them but actually correct some of my typos like adn -> and or ist -> its. Even Word 98 does that... well, thanks for your answers I guess I'll have to wait and see. Maybe I'll learn to live without it but after years of getting used to that kind of spell checker it's hard to live without it.

I am very (one might say extremely) relieved that at least somebody thinks 256MB of RAM will do nicely in my case... I've already seen myself starving But just in case, say I won't be able to live without my background spell checker, say I will have to use Word v. X instead of AppleWorks - will 256MB do or not? I'm kinda getting confused here, Microsoft states that the min. requirement for Office v. X is 128MB of RAM so I figured 256MB will do fine...

[Millennium]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Not only highlight them but actually correct some of my typos like adn -> and or ist -> its. Even Word 98 does that... well, thanks for your answers I guess I'll have to wait and see. Maybe I'll learn to live without it but after years of getting used to that kind of spell checker it's hard to live without it.

Ah; so you need what Word98 would call AutoCorrect alongside a spell checker. You can add that in with something like TypeIt4Me, which can be set up to act like this.

In your case, though, if you can't live without inline spell-checking and AutoCorrect, I'm going to recommend Nisus Writer Express. It'll run inside your 256MB limit, and is much cheaper than Office v.X. It also has the background spell-checker and AutoCorrect feature.

[D'Espice]

Thanks, I'm gonna take a look at Nisus. I won't have to purchase Office v. X though since I already bought it about a year ago and other than my PowerMac, never sold it

[robertj]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
Thanks, I'm gonna take a look at Nisus. I won't have to purchase Office v. X though since I already bought it about a year ago and other than my PowerMac, never sold it

If you already own Office, then spend the $60 on RAM instead of Nisus. I've seen 256MB for $33 or so. That way, not only will you be able to have an industry-standard word processor, but you'll have the RAM for whatever you're doing.

My girlfriend just bought a 12" iBook. It's so pretty.

[wataru]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
I am very (one might say extremely) relieved that at least somebody thinks 256MB of RAM will do nicely in my case... I've already seen myself starving But just in case, say I won't be able to live without my background spell checker, say I will have to use Word v. X instead of AppleWorks - will 256MB do or not? I'm kinda getting confused here, Microsoft states that the min. requirement for Office v. X is 128MB of RAM so I figured 256MB will do fine...

I ran my iBook with only 256MB for about a month. It was torture. 256MB should be called the minimum for OS X, and any additional apps' requirements are on top of that, meaning 384MB total for Office.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Millennium:
You can add that in with something like TypeIt4Me, which can be set up to act like this.

TypeIt4Me is entirely designed to "act like this" - it is the original auto-correct software that MS probably copied for Office. However, TypeIt4Me has the advantage of working system-wide and of preserving basic formatting of your text as well (such as including line breaks in e.g. your address when it inputs it). If the original poster needs that feature in one application, they need it in all others too. FWIW, it's shareware but runs full featured for 30 days which will be more than enough time for you to determine if it fits the bill and/or is worth the money. Check it out here.

Personally, I found it invaluable when writing my thesis (this was on MacOS 8, fwiw) but I haven't used it much since then.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by JKT:
TypeIt4Me is entirely designed to "act like this" - it is the original auto-correct software that MS probably copied for Office.

Actually, if I recall correctly, the original vision for TypeIt4Me (which was actually commercial software in its earliest implementations; it later became shareware) was simply as an abbreviation expander. Someone then saw that this exact same technology could be used for auto-correcting spelling mistakes.

I've never been a fan of auto-correct, to be honest. Then again, I deliberately misspell stuff on occasion (such as my Idea for The Worst Fanfic Ever: A Dark Tower/Pee-Wee Herman crossover called Wolves of Teh Keela), and I've long had trouble getting auto-correct software to understand exactly when I want to do that and when I don't.

[Shades of Gray]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Actually, if I recall correctly, the original vision for TypeIt4Me (which was actually commercial software in its earliest implementations; it later became shareware) was simply as an abbreviation expander. Someone then saw that this exact same technology could be used for auto-correcting spelling mistakes.

I think Nisus Classic was the first to have the abbreviation-expand mode, back in 1988-89. It was handy and very helpful feature.

[Old Toad]

Since you're a student you can get MS Office v. for Mac at a pretty reasonable price and will have the state of the art WP, spreadsheet, etc. suite of applications. Yes, I know using MS products is like dancing with the devil, but in this case the devil sure do dance good. I had AppleWorks, Thinkfree, OpenOffice and they all suck compared to MS Office v.Mac. IMHO that is.

[wataru]

Originally posted by wataru:
By the way, "OpenOffice" is not the same thing as OpenOffice.org. We are talking about OpenOffice.org.

[D'Espice]

Originally posted by Old Toad:
Since you're a student you can get MS Office v. for Mac at a pretty reasonable price and will have the state of the art WP, spreadsheet, etc. suite of applications. Yes, I know using MS products is like dancing with the devil, but in this case the devil sure do dance good. I had AppleWorks, Thinkfree, OpenOffice and they all suck compared to MS Office v.Mac. IMHO that is.

Uh.... I don't know what to say to that Seriously, I don't... I appreciate your piece of advice but I already bought Office v. X about a year ago and was greatly disappointed by both, its performance and stability. Which is basically why I'm looking for alternatives to begin with, I can't work with a word processing application that crashes every time I use it and lags behind my typing.

wataru:
What's the difference between OpenOffice and OpenOffice.org?

[JKT]

Originally posted by D'Espice:
What's the difference between OpenOffice and OpenOffice.org?

OpenOffice was already a trademarked name - for what, I don't know - thus OOo is known as OOo.

[D'Espice]

Fair enough, thank you.

[JKT]

Originally posted by Shades of Gray:
I think Nisus Classic was the first to have the abbreviation-expand mode, back in 1988-89. It was handy and very helpful feature.

Millenium/SoG - I stand corrected. FWIW, the first TypeIt4Me came out in '89.

[D'Espice]

I just bought another 256MB of RAM since I it was an incredible deal. 256MB PC2700/DDR333 for iBook/PowerBook for 26� + S&H = 35�. I couldn't resist that bargain, today was the last day otherwise I'd have to pay around 50 + S&H

So all your worries are over, I'm gonna have an iBook with 512MB of RAM, 35 bucks I think I can spare somehow.

[Graymalkin]

As much as I don't want to be beholden to Microsoft I really like Office v.X and 2004. There's some little things I can do without like the auto-transparent utility windows but there's some features I absolutely adore. Working with styles in Word is scores easier than with AppleWorks. While some people don't bother with styles I use them constantly. AppleWorks makes you jump through too many hoops to redefine styles or define new ones. It also has issues with actually applying style changes to existing paragraphs. Poor AppleWorks...you used to be cool.

[threestain]

where did you get that amazing deal?

I've got a 18 month old TiBook and want to bump up the ram to a gig from 512, but don't really want to shell out �100 ($180)...

[D'Espice]

I got that RAM stick at CanCom (www.cancom.de). Not really sure whether they also ship to England

[JKT]

http://www.cancomuk.com/

FWIW, a Crucial 512MB stick is �72 (VAT inclusive) at the moment.

[threestain]

The trouble is I don't know whether I really need to up it from 512 to 1024. Plus I either spend it on RAM or I get a nice shiny Palm T3/T5 for my medical textbooks and so on...