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crispibits

My dad has just got a new Apple laptop, with no office suite. My immediate thought was OpenOffice, but a cursory glance suggests that it isn't exactly 'integrated' with OSX. On the OOo site it does mention NeoOffice though, which appears to have better integration. Has anyone used NeoOffice on Apple vs Openoffice on Linux? Any comments on speed, reliability etc?
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M0PHP · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:35 pm Post subject:

I've nothing to do with macs (thankfully Wink

) but this feature comparison might help you a bit.

crispibits · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:12 pm Post subject:

Thanks for that. Unfortunately most of the stuff I've found so far ( I haven't done masses of googling though) seems to be from NeoOffice or the NeoOffice camp - so they'd be slightly biased! Furthermore, they all seem to compare against old versions of OOo (1.1.4 or earlier) - and it looks as though 2.0rc3 is out for Mac. Oh well, I guess I'll just download them both and see which seems easiest / nicest to look at.
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Rhakios · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:53 pm Post subject:

I have used NeoOffice, and it seems fine. It is, as you say, pretty much like OOo 1.1.4, but none the worse for that. They have made a pretty good job of making it look at home on the Apple desktop and you don't need X11 to run it.
I suppose the only problem with using it in conjunction with Linux and Windows computers running OOo2 is that it doesn't use use the open document format (yet?), so if you want to share files you have to stick with the old .sxx files or export to doc or pdf.
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crispibits · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 7:21 pm Post subject:

Cheers Rhakios - I understand it uses Java to a large extent. Does this have a detrimental effect on startup speed, afterall OOo is slow enough as it is!
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Rhakios · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 11:11 pm Post subject:

I have only used NeoOffice on a 1.5GHz PowerBook and found start up speed to be about what I would expect from OOo, i.e. not an instant launch, probably 15s or so. Once running it's fine, documents open in a moment.

Edit: Actually 28s for a fresh start when running on battery power (power saving features might slow things down a bit), crumbs!
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crispibits · Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:06 am Post subject:

Blimey, it's a good job my dad's retired, he's got time on his hands... Smile

I'm going to spend a day with him trying to install various bits and pieces, and get to know about OSX myself, so I can help him if need be. I've also got to transfer data over from his old iBook to the new one, so I'm suddenly goign to have to learn all about netwroking apples. Should good fun!

Thanks for the info Rhakios, I'll let you know how we get on with OOo 2.0rc3 as well
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ollie · Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 9:43 am Post subject:

Networking Apples is like networking Linux and Windows - use TCP/IP. As for network file system compatibility I've got a little story.

One of the admin staff at work deleted some files from her hard drive because she had them backed up on a CD-RW. Well they suddenly needed the files, the CD-RW wouldn't load in the same system (Compaq Evo) or any other official system. They came to me (I've got a good rep - trust me Laughing

) as a last resort - "Would Linux help them recover the files?". So I took the disk to a spare workstation that I had running Ubuntu 5.04 as a demo for students. Magic - could see all the files but it only has a CD-ROM, used Samba (the Windows networking protocol) to connect to my Mac OS X Xserve and copied the files to my home directory. Went down to the Mac OS X Classroom and burnt a new CD-RW and returned the files.

So - you shouldn't have any worries with copying the old data across. Very Happy