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NeoOffice (OpenOffice): is it good enough to replace Microsoft Office??

smwatson

smwatson

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 30, 2005
961
6
London, England
Ive bought Office 2004 Student & Teacher with my iMac anyway, but i was wondering if NeoOffice is any good? I like the look of it as it provides a few featues that Office lacks that i would like. However, i NEED it to be fully intergrateable with my schools network. My school is all PC (booo) and it uses Office 2003 (XP edition??) so, basically my question is how easy is it to open, edit, print etc NeoOffice documents on a Windows PC using office. Thnks everyone
 
smwatson said:
Ive bought Office 2004 Student & Teacher with my iMac anyway, but i was wondering if NeoOffice is any good? I like the look of it as it provides a few featues that Office lacks that i would like. However, i NEED it to be fully intergrateable with my schools network. My school is all PC (booo) and it uses Office 2003 (XP edition??) so, basically my question is how easy is it to open, edit, print etc NeoOffice documents on a Windows PC using office. Thnks everyone
Click to expand...
Easy, but it doesn't have near the features that Office 2004 has. I would suggest trying it out, and seeing how it compares to Office 2004, see if it has features you do and don't need. There are a lot of features that NeoOffice doesn't have compared to Office 2004. Just try it out. As for my basic usage, I CAN use NeoOffice/OpenOffice, but I would rather use Office 2004 for critical documents. Remember also there is a learning curve.

NOTE: NeoOffice and OpenOffice are completely different. OpenOffice requires X11, NeoOffice is Carbon. OpenOffice is 2.0, NeoOffice is 1.1 (based off of OpenOffice 1.1.4)
 
Well, you knew this had to be coming, so I'll get it out of the way right now:

Download it and find out! :)

It's free, after all... can't hurt to try, can it?
 
I'd guess that Office would cause less heartache when it comes to networking with your school but mkaake makes a good point, why not try it out. Just out of interest, what are these extra features in NeoOffice that Office 2004 doesn't have?
 
I'm going to go against the majority opinion here by saying this, but I think Microsoft Office is actually a really good product. As much as I like the idea of free/open-source software, and as good as it is in some cases, OpenOffice.org (NeoOffice is based on Oo_O) is simply not as full-featured and easy to use as Microsoft Office. Since you have already paid for Office, just stick with it.

My recommendation might be different for someone who didn't already own Office because NeoOffice is free. However, I had used both NeoOffice and OpenOffice a fair amount and still decided that MS Office was worth the money, and for me it's been well worth it.
 
mduser63 said:
I'm going to go against the majority opinion here by saying this, but I think Microsoft Office is actually a really good product.
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I don't think most people would disagree with you. MS Office is a very good product. I've used it ever since I switched. I tried NeoOffice a few times but didn't like it enough to switch, even if it is free.
 
I have both and the only thing that I like about open offive is the fact that it can remember your commonly used words and ask you if you want to use them.
 
You already own it so go for it. I've used NeoOffice and OpenOffice (PC side) and, while they are "nice", there's really no comparing the two in the end. Microsoft's Office suite is a decent product. It loads fast, is compatible just about everywhere in the world, and is very flexible. NeoOffice is updated constantly (almost daily at times) but it is what an open source, free program should be ... slow and buggy. I guess I'm referring to slow more than buggy, although it is improving. Load times can be a bear if you are used to Office and it doesn't have the depth of Microsoft Office. The primary selling point for NeoOffice is ... it's free. You have the student version but free always beats cheap from a consumer standpoint. From a user standpoint, I'd say your money was well spent. You received a considerable discount for being a student and you won't be disappointed with the product.

Enjoy it! You can download NeoOffice if you want to feel better about your decision in the end.
 
I've been using OpenOffice for a little while and liked it. I used MS Office before, but I can do everything I did in there with OpenOffice. Word is better though, but only because it's a huge company the makes it, so everywhere uses it. I've found that files I save as .doc don't open well with Word. As you've got MS Office, just keep using that I only switch as I won't be able to use Word and that on my Mac as I won't be able to pay for it as soon as I buy it. When I get to uni though I will get it from them for cheeper (or free maybe) and switch back.
 
Which is better... NeoOffice or OpenOffice?

Is OpenOffice worth working in 11? I know nothing about loading an extra OS on top of OS X.

It sounds from the above like Open Office is further down the line than NeoOffice? But from the website I thought NeoOffice worked better in X with the peripherals?
 
Well, I needed a way of putting together spreadsheets and combining multiple elements in a text file (w/o TextEdit's limitations), so NeoOffice works for me. Slow to load, but an adequate solution. I doubt it could replace Office, especially if you're used to it, but it does provide an alternative method.
 
As others said, it's worth a try since it's free.
I am using NeoOffice on Mac and OpenOffice on Windows for a long time now. It's not better than MS Office but it's free and it's OK for those 20 features I actually use. I am able to survive in MS Office environment. I even make PDF from Word documents for other people.
Unfortunately, Oo_O also has bloatware sindrome like MS Office. So, on Linux I am using KOffice.
 
could somebody post a link to a free version that will run on tiger. I havent found any that seem to run on tiger yet and im kinda upset.
 
http://www.neooffice.org/

As I understand it, Open Office is better but does not work in X... there's this other System window you can download that works over X but it all sounded too much like working in Classic.

So I gave up with Open Office and went back to using Microsoft ... but given the leaps and bounds that open source software is making, I don't think I will ever buy Microsoft Office again.
 
ldburroughs said:
but it is what an open source, free program should be ... slow and buggy.
Click to expand...

I call BS on that.

Apache: Powering more than 71% of the internet's webservers.
BIND: The software that provides the DNS (domain name service) for the entire Internet.
sendmail: the most important and widely used email transport software on the Internet.
OpenSSL: is the standard for secure communication (strong encryption) over the internet.

The TCP/IP DNS, SSL, and e-mail servers are especially interesting because
they're "category killers"; not only are they extremely capable and robust,
they're so good that no commercial competition has ever been successful at
replacing them as the most widely used product on their respective
categories.
 
I use Neooffice, but if I had the money I would get MS Office...

Oh, and you forgot Firefox, Thunderbird, and Camino.
 
God damn MS office is expensive. I guess I'll have to give this Neo Office a shot. Why don't mac's come with decent word processors already installed on them? Every computer needs a word processor.
 
Melkor said:
God damn MS office is expensive. I guess I'll have to give this Neo Office a shot. Why don't mac's come with decent word processors already installed on them? Every computer needs a word processor.
Click to expand...

well if you do only low level stuff then apple works for $49 is the way to go.

if you need to be compatible in an MS-office enviroment and if you need Excel and Powerpoint a lot then MS-office is money well spent.
 
I disagree that Word is better; guess it depends what you do with it. It´s impossible to type in Chinese in Word (the English version of Word, anyway) without the lines being screwy, and editing being next to impossible. In NO it works like a dream.

NO does take a long time to load, but it´s still a release candidate (the version I have, that is).
 
NeoOffice is grim with spreadsheets:(

I tried it for 2 hours then uninstalled it.

Appleworks made a much better job of opening Excel files and preserving formatting and that saying something:eek:
 
i got the X11 version and i like it. it's not as fast as office, and it's pretty ugly, but it does the job. however i'm having trouble importing access databases
 
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