Thread: Which word processor for Mac do you recommend?

So I will be starting a new job (as an assistant professor) in the fall, and will be buying a Mac with my startup funds. I've been a PC guy for a long time, but I just can't handle Vista. Anyway, what word processor for Mac do you recommend?

I will need to open documents by others (at times), create quizzes, exams, etc. The academic writing will typically be taken care of using LaTeX or LyX, so that is not a problem. Here are the main contenders it seems:

1. Microsoft Office
2. Apple iWorks
3. OpenOffice
4. NeoOffice (a Mac version of Open Office)

I know there are a few others such as Nisus, Mellell, etc.

What are your thoughts?

I have all you mentioned installed, I use MS Office as the primary wp, as most correspondence to the 'other side' has to be in ms office format, although all af them do that, office just seems to me my first choice. I used OO for years on linux and it's great too.

I downloaded OpenOffice. No complaints and the price was right.

I've been using Open Office 3.1 under the Linux distro Ubuntu 9.04 and have had no problems. It is very similar to MS Word. You can save documents as .doc files for greater compatibility.

It's free, and would also work on a PC, so you could try it out before switching to a different operating system.

Originally Posted by jpfrench81

So I will be starting a new job (as an assistant professor) in the fall, and will be buying a Mac with my startup funds. I've been a PC guy for a long time, but I just can't handle Vista. Anyway, what word processor for Mac do you recommend?

I will need to open documents by others (at times), create quizzes, exams, etc. The academic writing will typically be taken care of using LaTeX or LyX, so that is not a problem. Here are the main contenders it seems:

1. Microsoft Office
2. Apple iWorks
3. OpenOffice
4. NeoOffice (a Mac version of Open Office)

I know there are a few others such as Nisus, Mellell, etc.

What are your thoughts?

I've gone through all four of the those. The newest one I just acquired is the iWorks (Pages). I would recommend Microsoft Office or iWorks. I'm really starting to like Pages though.

Unless you've used the latest version of Microsoft Office, you'll probably find less of a learning curve from older version of MS Office to OO than you'll have from older versions of MS Office to the current one. 95 - 97 - 2000- 2003 all have the same basic look and feel and function - only minor changes. 2007 is significantly different both in look and feel and in default document format.

I primarily use Pages (iWork) with Word as a supplement.

[kidding]

Duh, always use a Microsoft product whenever possible.

[/kidding]

Use OpenOffice.

I have never used it on a Mac, but OpenOffice is great. I use all of the applications on a regular basis except for Base. I often exchange documents with people of multiple different Office suites and have no problems with conversion. Most often this is between Office 2000 and then 2003 at school and OpenOffice 2.x (I haven't upgraded to version 3 and I've been using 2 since it was in beta almost 4 years ago...). Plus, you can't beat the price. It doesn't have every feature imaginable, but it has more than enough for me. I do some more sophisticated stuff too.

I haven't had Office installed since Leopard broke my rather ancient copy of Office -- and, even then, I hadn't used it in years. I never recommend people use Office; it's just bad software, especially on the Mac. Overpriced, too.

Pages (in iWork) has become my main word processor. I'm very picky about my word processor UI, and it took Apple a while to meet my standards. They finally hit it in iWork '08. (I now have '09.)

iWork '09 (and Leopard -- TextEdit) brought the ability to open .docx files to Apple's software.

When Pages can't quite get it done with opening a file, I use OpenOffice, which I prefer over NeoOffice (it's faster). OpenOffice does handle the opening of .docx files a bit better than Pages, I've noticed, but that's primarily when the formatting is out of the ordinary.

I've been thinking of adding Mellel to the bunch only because of the way it handles writing right to left -- for working with a Hebrew text.