[OT] NeoOffice

[Kay C Lan]

On 6/6/07, Bob Warren <bobwarren at howsoft.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Kay, [Is that correct? You put your initials "HTH" at the end of your
> post.]


Actually the HTH was meant to mean Hope That Helps. My signature block is
automatically appended to my e-mails, but it's a gif file (in a successful
attempt to stop webbots extracting my contact details) but this list doesn't
accept attachments so you never see it.


> opted immediately for Open Office (which seems to include Word only for
> OSX at the moment). That was because there were so many warnings about
> potential bugs on account of the fact that NeoOffice is a test release.


Actually I tend to believe all Open Source software should come with such a
warning. Really it's just a beta release and it's pretty standard for betas
to come with such a warning. This one just appears a little scarier.

Have you tried it yourself? If so, and you tell me that it is reasonably
> stable, I'll certainly give it a go.


Yes, and No.

I use it almost daily, BUT only to read/access what the Windoz world has
sent me. I never create anything with it. Typically these are .doc, .xls and
.ppt files.

As far as stability is concerned I would put it up there with the better
bunch of Open Source software. Compared to Audacity, which I recommend to
any Mac user who wants to dabble* with sound, I would say NeoOffice is more
stable.

As far as usability is concerned there is no question that the rendered
files do NOT render 100%; particularly Excel spreadsheets don't seem to come
out right. But 2.1 has made noticeable improvements on previous versions so
I can only hope that things will continue to improve. In previous version
there were occasions when actual data disappeared behind margins etc, making
it possible to actually miss some important piece of information, but again
I'm noticing that far less with 2.1

<unabashed dig>
The one area where NeoOffice outperforms the Windoz equivalent is that you
get more bloatware for your buck; but that has to be expected from any Java
app :-(
</unabashed dig>

For any Mac user who doesn't have a copy of MS Office/Word/Excel/PowerPoint
and needs to occasionally view Windoz files I recommend giving NeoOffice a
spin. Not having ever created anything with NeoOffice I can only suggest
that if the creation side is anywhere near as good as the viewing side, then
if I needed to create a  Word/Excel/PowerPoint file then I'd give it a go.

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

HTH :-)

*If you occasionally need to open an odd sound file, or want to put some
vinyl onto CD, then Audacity is the go. If you what to become a sound
engineer and make money then there's much better out their; you'll just have
to pay for it.