Beginner's Question Re Macbook Software

[lotus eater]

I use my computor for only the most elementary purposes - word processing, the web, itunes, a spreadsheet of a simple sort. For some 5+ years I've been using ibooks with 'office for mac' software - of which I use the word and excel applications (powerpoint etc is of no use to me)

I will soon buy a macbook. I see that Apple offers iWorks08 with similar functions at half the price of the 'Office08 for Mac'. I would apreciate any comments on which would be a better buy for my purposes. In fact do I need either for word processing? ie is there not a simple word processing programme in the macbook? I suppose there isn't one for a spreadsheet.

Hugely useful if there were quick responses. I'll be acting on the earliest of them as my purchase isn't far away.

[Drewcifer]

I use my computor for only the most elementary purposes - word processing, the web, itunes, a spreadsheet of a simple sort. For some 5+ years I've been using ibooks with 'office for mac' software - of which I use the word and excel applications (powerpoint etc is of no use to me)

I will soon buy a macbook. I see that Apple offers iWorks08 with similar functions at half the price of the 'Office08 for Mac'. I would apreciate any comments on which would be a better buy for my purposes. In fact do I need either for word processing? ie is there not a simple word processing programme in the macbook? I suppose there isn't one for a spreadsheet.

Hugely useful if there were quick responses. I'll be acting on the earliest of them as my purchase isn't far away.

I've used both. I like Keynote in iwork, but prefer the MSFT software for the rest (especially if you have to work with windows people). I'd first suggest looking at openoffice (neooffice for the mac I believe). It's an open source version of office that works well on the mac.

[Meerkat]

Another vote for the free suite, NeoOffice. I've been using it for a couple of years with no compatability problems with MS Office at all (I often need to create docs on my Mac but use them on a WinXP laptop when travelling). However if you create/use spreadsheets with extensive macros, then you may have no choice but to use Office for Mac as Neo won't handle them.

[nikster]

I've used Numbers - it's OK, a little bit nicer than Excel, and exports to Excel format. Which actually seems to work, but I haven't used it for anything fancy. Then again Excel is the only MS Office product that's actually pretty good IMO...

If you use Word and need to interact with others, there's no way around MS Word - Pages is just as good, but first of all you need to learn the differences to Word, and second import/export to and from Word is never 100%.

I found OpenOffice pretty nice on Windows, so I'd definitely check out NeoOffice. In fact I might do that myself. It will have the same import/export issues with the Word DOC format though. Import is OK, e.g. you'll be able to read it. But if you need to take somebody else's DOC document, edit it, and send it back, it's just not feasible with anything except the original MS Word.

If you go the MS Office route keep in mind that you will need the latest version, Office 08 for the Mac. The other versions are not native for OS X / Intel and so have a lot of performance issues on the latest machines. Like they'll use 10% CPU even if in the background and so on.

[Richard-BKK]

OpenOffice 2.4 is official available for Intel based Mac's it works great. I can surely recommend it...

http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US

[lotus eater]

Thank you all for giving me comments quickly. (Even if I did lose the thread in places - as I said I am not too savvy with computer/software terminology and usage.)

OpenOffice, NeoOffice - are different names for the same thing?

How hard is it for a (non expert) Word user to learn Pages?

I am retired in Thailand and do not import/export word docs. All I need is perhaps occasionally to attach and email something I've written to people who have PC/Word computors. Conversely I'd want to read somwthing written/attached and emailed to me. The spreadsheet I use is a simple one I constructed myself to monitor budget, etc - nothing more elaborate.

OpenOffice 2.4 is official available for Intel based Mac's it works great. I can surely recommend it...

http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US

I'll download this. It looks like it'll give me the things I want, including a spreadsheet and the ability to read and be read by word users - is that right? If not I guess I can address the question again. I assume there's no qualitative disadvantage in adding the iWork or Office application later vs. having it pre-loaded if I buy it with the macbook.

Apologies for anything that is incomprehensible in my queries.

[slackula]

Regarding Open/Neo office, yes they are basically the same thing; an open source project to create a viable competitor for MS office with Neo being the Mac orientated version.

I have used both and while they are good, there are still some occasions where I wouldn't trust them (such as sending out a CV) to reliably render fonts and formatting.

If you buy a Mac it will come with TextEdit which is actually a pretty good program for word processing, it's more capable than Notepad, a bit like MS Works text editor was.

The iWork suite is pretty dang good, especially for the price. My wife, who converted to using a Mac last September, far prefers it over the Mac:Office software and it is easily capable of spreadsheets and the like.

There is a learning curve but it is not too steep, once you move away from the Office way of doing things and get used to having floating menus rather than large monolithic tool bars across the top of the screen it becomes a very nice user experience.

That is just my subjective opinion, but you do get a free trial of both with a new Mac so you have 30 days to figure out which one you like best. Good luck and enjoy your MacBook. :-)

[motoyen]

Try TextEdit. It's a free basic word processor bundled with every Mac. Look for it in your Applications folder.

[lotus eater]

I now have my macbook and would be most grateful for a bit of further advice - and apologize in advance if answers to my questions were implicit in previous replies.

I intend to download OpenOffice 2.4 and try that along with the textedit already in the mac. If that proves suitable for my purposes (including a simple spreadsheet) I won't bother with getting the Office for Mac.

However I did have Office for Mac on my old iBook, with Word docs and Excel spreadsheets.

What will happen when I attempt to transfer the data from the iBook to my new Macbook with a firewire connexion? Will the data transfer in usable form? Will the Office for Mac programme also transfer, and if so do I end up with both OpenOffice and Office? (I also may still have the old Office CD). I really don't want a confusion (to my less than computer savvy brain) on my Mac.

Any advice will be hugely appreciated.

On a separate question, is there a way for me to transfer stuff manually and selectively from the iBook to the Macbook? eg transfer all the music but not all the podcasts in iTunes?

[slackula]

I intend to download OpenOffice 2.4 and try that along with the textedit already in the mac. If that proves suitable for my purposes (including a simple spreadsheet) I won't bother with getting the Office for Mac.

However I did have Office for Mac on my old iBook, with Word docs and Excel spreadsheets.

I would recommend downloading NeoOffice rather than OpenOffice, they are essentially the same thing but NeoOffice works better with a Mac, the shortcuts etc utilise the ⌘ key.

What will happen when I attempt to transfer the data from the iBook to my new Macbook with a firewire connexion? Will the data transfer in usable form? Will the Office for Mac programme also transfer, and if so do I end up with both OpenOffice and Office? (I also may still have the old Office CD). I really don't want a confusion (to my less than computer savvy brain) on my Mac.

Any advice will be hugely appreciated.

On a separate question, is there a way for me to transfer stuff manually and selectively from the iBook to the Macbook? eg transfer all the music but not all the podcasts in iTunes?

I'll leave those questions to the more experienced users here, good luck and enjoy the new MacBook

[billp]

Your migration is really two issues: applications and your personal data.

There's no problem simply transferring your data over to your new Mac. Just take your Documents folder and copy its contents into the Documents folder on the new machine. Copy your iTunes Music and iPhoto Pictures folders over intact.

As for legacy software, it really depends on how old it is. If your MS Office is only a couple of years old, it should work fine. But don't just copy over the old application, go back to your installation disks and install it fresh. If your MS Office is very old, it may not work very well with the new system software (or maybe even not at all). Then you either have to buy a more recent version, or just leave it behind. My recommendation would be, just forget the Microsoft stuff. Just download NeoOffice. It's free and it's continually updating itself. It does almost everything MS Office does. All your legacy Word and Excel documents will also open in NeoOffice, no problem. I even opened old WordPerfect Mac documents.

By the way, if you just need a quick, simple word processor or spreadsheet, try Google Documents (free online applications). Very quick, easy to use and the documents are stored handy online whenever and wherever you need them.

[T_Dog]

I bought a MacBook two years ago and I included the MS Applications for MAC in the purchase directly from Apple. Once in those applications, all my old windows files (MS Word, Excel, PPT) load just fine. It was the easiest way for me since I had a legacy set of files.

[nikster]

Here's how to transfer data/apps:

- Start up your iBook in Target Disk mode - hold down T at startup

- Connect iBook to MacBook via FireWire cable

- Use Migration assistant to migrate your entire account over. It will offer you to migrate applications as well.

It's best do do this before you have even used the MacBook - after this, your MacBook will look 1:1 like your iBook did, with all applications, preferences, screen backgrounds, and so on restored. It's very simple, and one of the great things about the Mac. It just works.

Alternatively, if you already have a new account on your Macbook and don't want to start over, you can just access the iBook like a normal FireWire drive and transfer documents as needed.

You can also copy your old Microsoft applications over (just drag from the iBook to the Applications folder). They will still work on the MacBook. You will have to enter your serial again, unless you used the Migration assistant in which case it will just work as before.

The old apps might be slower than they should be since they run in an emulated environment where the MacBook basically simulates a PPC processor. That takes some serious horsepower all in itself so the apps may appear slow. I have done this before though and it was pretty usable as long as you shut down Word/Excel when they are not needed. MS apps are pretty bad about resource usage, e.g. they use 10% CPU even when they are just sitting there unused. And the PPC translation engine doesn't help that.

Let us know how it goes... NeoOffice is certainly better than OpenOffice b/c OpenOffice is still X-windows based to it looks and feels horribly out of place on a Mac. Hopefully OpenOffice will fix that at some point.

Once the data is there, you'll see whether or not NeoOffice can import it properly - I have had mixed results. Same for iWorks08 - worked often, but not always.

Edited June 14, 2008 by nikster

[lotus eater]

Thanks chaps for such an abundance of info quickly provided. I'm quite sure that as I digest and apply it it'll see me through all my problems - and I'll come back with difficulties, if I may.

I'm moving around for the next week so I will be slow to report.

But just for now, the NeoOffice seems the preferred recommendation, contrary to Richard-BKK's strong recommendation of OpenOffice. So I'll look for that now.

Thanks again - and I will report again.

[LJS]

I've used Numbers - it's OK, a little bit nicer than Excel, and exports to Excel format. Which actually seems to work, but I haven't used it for anything fancy. Then again Excel is the only MS Office product that's actually pretty good IMO...

If you use Word and need to interact with others, there's no way around MS Word - Pages is just as good, but first of all you need to learn the differences to Word, and second import/export to and from Word is never 100%.

I found OpenOffice pretty nice on Windows, so I'd definitely check out NeoOffice. In fact I might do that myself. It will have the same import/export issues with the Word DOC format though. Import is OK, e.g. you'll be able to read it. But if you need to take somebody else's DOC document, edit it, and send it back, it's just not feasible with anything except the original MS Word.

If you go the MS Office route keep in mind that you will need the latest version, Office 08 for the Mac. The other versions are not native for OS X / Intel and so have a lot of performance issues on the latest machines. Like they'll use 10% CPU even if in the background and so on.

[lotus eater]

...

I found OpenOffice pretty nice on Windows, so I'd definitely check out NeoOffice. In fact I might do that myself. It will have the same import/export issues with the Word DOC format though. Import is OK, e.g. you'll be able to read it. But if you need to take somebody else's DOC document, edit it, and send it back, it's just not feasible with anything except the original MS Word.

...

OpenOffice 2.4 is official available for Intel based Mac's it works great. I can surely recommend it...

http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US

Regarding Open/Neo office, yes they are basically the same thing; an open source project to create a viable competitor for MS office with Neo being the Mac orientated version.

...

I am hesitating a bit between downloading the OpenOffice or the NeoOffice - each is recommended above. nikster and slackula are saying expressly that Neo is better for Mac; but the Open site, as Richard says expressly specifies the mac/intel. Please help me choose the friendlier and less troublesome of the two downloads for my new macbook and my elementary purposes.

[slackula]

์If you are on a Mac you can download and use either Neo or Open Office as was said above. The advantage (on Macs) of using Neo is that it is designed to use Mac keyboard shortcuts etc. Functionally I believe there is little (if any) difference between the two.

If you have just bought a new Mac it will be an Intel based machine, and that will not really affect the choice between Neo/Open Office. Why not download both, try them and drag the one that you don't like to the trash!