A Free Alternative to Microsoft Office

If like me, you really only use Microsoft Office when a client gives you a document in Word to pull the text into your design work, take a look at NeoOffice. I have recently upgraded to OSX Tiger and didn’t want to spend a few hundred quid on a new version of office (that I don’t have to run in Classic) so downloaded NeoOffice, a free Office suite based on the Open Source programme called Open Office but adapted for Mac. Within Neo Office you have a very “word like” programme, a spreadsheet, presentation package (like powerpoint), and a drawing programme.

I have used the “word” and spreadsheet programme to pull in text from word and excel with no problems. The only downfall is it doesn’t always show the pictures in a word programme. If you have used word the layout etc is all very familiar. If your a PC user try free Open Office which is also available for Mac (worked great on my PC, but I had a lot of problems with it on Mac).