Writing text documents

Hey yall, been a long time forum reader and loving it, so many people who are so knowledgeable its amazing....but to my question. Im a PC user and going to switch to apple (macbook) next school year, around august or so. But my main concern is what application are there to write papers on, cause i really dont want to spend all this money on this laptop and then spend another 100 or so bucks for office for mac. What comes with the macbook, and how is iWorks or anything like that...thanks for the help

 

What you can do is download Neooffice. It's sort of slow to start up but works just like Microsoft Office. I can even open office documents! It's totally free. I'm using it right now and it's working really well.

 

TextEdit is a basic word processor that comes with the Mac. Its more powerful than Windows Notepad, but won't be good for continuous, daily use, as it just isn't enough.

You can download NeoOffice, the Mac equivalent of OpenOffice, as FidyYuan suggested, but I think Microsoft Office for Mac is a good investment.

Get the 2008 version that's arriving soon though, and not the 2004 version out right now.

 

well ive have openoffice for my pc for a long time, and just didnt like it that much...it is free so i may end up doing it anyway...does anybody have any experience with iWork, i dont mind paying a little but definatly not like 120 bucks

 

iWork is not as good as Microsoft Office for Mac right now...but its better than TextEdit. Are you sure you don't want Office for Mac?

Most people were impressed with Office 2007 for Windows, the 2008 version for Mac will be similar.

 

You should probably save up and get Office for the mac. If you have to open office documents with esoteric features (say, from some malicious teacher), it may well save you a lot of suffering. I've used the Pages trial on my macbook a bit. It's... a word processor. It functions. It doesn't seem as powerful as Word, but it has some level of doc support (haven't tested/researched this or anything).

 

When can we expect Office 2008 to hit shelves?

 

According to Wikipedia, the second half of 2007. Don't mind the 2008 name, its just 2008 for some reason. But Office 2008 will be released in 2007 for sure.

 

Get Office for Mac. If you ever have to swap documents back and forth, you will really want Office. It is the standard unfortunately. There is the student edition for around $130, but check your school. My university sells it at half that price. Look around.

 

I would check with your school's IT department--my school offers Office 2k7 (windows) and 2k4 (mac) for free download (as well as a ton of other nice software--going to a big research school has some benefits I guess. ).

NeoOffice works pretty darn well, though if you need to use spreadsheets at all, I would really recommend going with MSOffice--the NeoOffice spreadsheet program just isn't there yet. As far as other options go, AbiWord is a pretty nice, basic, free program, though I don't know if it will run on OSX.

It really depends on what you need to do. Heck, there are some free web-based word processors that get the job done for simpler stuff (see, for instance www.writely.com).

 

Just a few qns. Can .word/.ppt attachments be opened and edited using iWork? Really captivated by Keynote! Also, if i prepare a presentation using Keynote, can I open it on a Windows PC?