It’s a 170Mb download, so not for the faint of heart (or those on dial-up), but Open Office aims to provide a free Office Package. It’s also available on CD apparently. It requires X11, also needed by GIMP, which I installed last week.
It installed easily enough and opened readily. It happily opened an MS Word document I’d been working on recently and was happy to show me the changes I’d made as I’d been using Track Changes in my work.
This could be a satisfactory alternative for those who can’t afford or choose not to use the very expensive MS Word. My only complaint after a 5 minute trial is that it’s somewhat ugly and has that clunky feel which Windows has.
Meantime, it seems Microsoft has announced a release date for Office 2004. Microsoft Office 2004 to ship in May. Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit today will announce that Office 2004 for Mac will ship the third week of May [Via: Macintosh News]
