NeoOffice told me an update was available. There's a patch (2.2.5 Patch 10, which I've now installed) but the web site also announced that NeoOffice 3.0 is now available. Anybody tried it yet? Any opinions about upgrading to 3.0 vs staying with 2.2.5 (still being supported) for now?
I've always used Open Office for the mac (been a Mac guy since waaay back when; bought on of the first Mac SE's ($2,700 in 1986 or so) with a whopping 1 MB memory (more than 640K!) and 20 MB hard drive, not GB but MB mind you; I'm one of the reasons Steve flies around in a G5 or whatever he has now ;-)). A little klunky with X11, but now that 3.0 is native, it works fine for me. So what's the advantage or disadvantage to using NeoOffice? Never heard of it but it sounds intriguing. Rick #4 2006
NeoOffice is a sort-of customized port of Open Office for Max OSX. Comparing NeoOffice 2.x to NeoOffice 3.x, is like comparing Open Office 2.x to OpenOffice 3.x If you're happy with the 2.x version, then don't worry about it. I've run OpenOffice on my Ubuntu machines for years, recently had all of them running 3.x Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) has OpenOffice 3 as standard
I was not aware that OpenOffice 3 is now native on the Mac. As Jay said, NeoOffice is (was) the port of OpenOffice for the Mac. I could never find out how to install X11 software on the Mac. I couldn't figure out if it should just install, or if I had to "install" X11 first, and I could not find out if X11 programs could be launched like regular programs, or if they had to be run in a terminal.
download: OpenOffice.org Download I've only upgraded one of my machines to Ubuntu 9.04. Actually did a wipe of the hard drive and a clean install, not an upgrade. My other Ubuntu machines running 8.10, I just went to the Open Office site (You can also find it at Sun Microsystems) and downloaded the .deb
Daniel Well, don't leave me on pins and needles here, it's bad for my stress. Did the new OpenOffice suite work? jay
It installed fine. I use OpenOffice on my Linux machines (the old laptop and the new netbook) but the mountain of settings I found myself going through here makes me unsure whether I actually want to use it at home or not. I've never had any problems with NeoOffice. OO told me there was an update available for French language support. I don't use French so I unchecked it. I opened a new document and again it told me of the same update. I clicked Cancel. Later, as I was going through menus it told me I've never checked for updates. So I clicked on Check Now, and I got a message that said Update check failed. Now I like NeoOffice even more than I used to.
Huh. I never get those sort of error messages. But, IMHO, there really isn't enough of a difference between NeoOffice/OpenOffice 2.x to 3.x, to justify an upgrade, for the average user. I use it because it's new and flashy, not because I have to
Yep. Apple iWork: $79. OpenOffice and NewOffice: Free. Apple iWork: closed source. OpenOffice and NeoOffice: open source. OpenOffice and NeoOffice are complete office suites that do everything Microcrapsoft Office does. I don't know whether iWork does or not. I do donate to OpenOffice and NeoOffice. But I'd rather support open source programs than closed source programs. And, to tell you the truth, I'd been using OpenOffice on my PC and I didn't even realize that Apple had a word processing pogram. As soon as I got my iMac turned on, I downloaded Firefox, Thunderbird, and NeoOffice.
I thought that might be the reason. The way I looked at it Microsoft wants $350 for Office and Apple iWorks only cost $79. I was attracted by the fact that iWorks is made by Apple and works with the Apple OS with no problems. I value stability and compatibility. 18 months into Mac ownership and still not a single program crash. My only frustration has been when trying to convert Pages (Apple's word processor) documents to Word files. Monster.com requires resumes in .doc format and then converts them to HTML. The double conversion destroys my formating.
OpenOffice and NeoOffice both can save documents in several different versions of MS Word, as well as several other formats. eFax does not accept attachments in OO native format. I just save them instead in MS Word format. I've never had any problems with OO or NeoO. I have a file called "Blank Fax" which is just an empty .doc file set to my prefered font for faxes, that opens in NeoO. When I save it, I don't have to select MS Word format because it remembers. I just have to give it a file name. I think I'll postpone switching to NeoO 3.0 for a while.
Pages allows the user to save in several versions of MS Word along with other formats too. I can save a file, email it to my wife, and it opens up fine on her PC in Word. I give that same file to Monster.com, which requires resumes to be in RTF or DOC, and it absolutely destroys it. CareerBuilder.com will take that same file and it works great. The issue is Monster.com's conversion to HTML.
