Unfortunately, neither option offered a complete solution. Office 2008
can share the latest file formats with Office 2007 for Windows, but the
Mac and Windows versions of Office neither look nor work exactly alike.
If you’re already familiar with Office 2007 on Windows, Office 2008 for
the Mac will seem different enough to frustrate and confuse you.
Apple’s iWork is the only other office suite solution, but it lacks a
Windows version. For a true cross-platform office suite, you can now
rely on the open source OpenOffice 3.0.
This
office suite offers true compatibility across multiple platforms,
running on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. In fact, version 3.0 is the
first version that finally offers native support for Mac OS X (previous
versions required X11 to run on the Mac).
More importantly, this suite also offers file compatibility with the
latest Office 2007 file formats (such as .docx) along with the newest
Open Document Format (ODF) file standards. In addition, you can
directly export files to PDF format as well although it cannot read or
write to the native file formats of iWork.
Where Office 2008 and iWork fall short is that both suites only offer a
word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program (while Office
2008 also offers Entourage as an e-mail client and organizer). In
contrast, this suite offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation
program, vector drawing program, and a relational database.
OpenOffice 3.0 offers five programs
Another major difference between this suite and Office 2008 or iWork is
the way it handles multiple programs. With Office 2008 or iWork, you’re
essentially using three separate programs. For example, if you want to
do word processing, you need to load Microsoft Word. If you want to do
number-crunching in a spreadsheet, you need to load Microsoft Excel.
Having to load and switch between separate programs is acceptable, but
clumsy.
On the other hand with this suite, you only need to load a single
program and then choose which function you need (word processing,
spreadsheet, etc.) through the New command, under the File menu.
Every program feature is available at all times
If you’re using the word processor, choose the New command and then
choose whether you want to open a database or presentation. The suite
opens a window that contains toolbar icons unique to that program (such
as creating a spreadsheet). The menu bar always displays commands for
the currently active window, so if you click on a word processing
window, you’ll see word processing commands and if you click on a
spreadsheet window, you’ll see spreadsheet commands.
OpenOffice 3.0 displays different features inside separate windows
Besides maintaining file format compatibility with Office 2007, this
suite also provides something lacking in Office 2008 for the Mac --
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) support. If you have any macros
created in Excel, you’ll find that many of them can run in this suite.
Since Office 2008 for the Mac lacks such VBA support, this suite’s
spreadsheet is actually more compatible with Excel for Windows than
Excel for the Mac.
Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of this suite is the lack of
pre-designed templates. Where Office 2008 and iWork offer dozens of
templates to help you create newsletters, brochures, invoices, and
business presentations, this suite provides the ability to create and
save templates, but just a few pre-designed templates for creating
simple slideshow presentations. Another drawback is that Microsoft
provides a huge library of clip art images for pasting into your
documents. This suite provides none.
If you can live without templates or clip art and want a free, open
source office suite that provides the same interface across multiple
platforms, file format compatibility with Office 2007 and Open Document
standards, and the most popular features found in Microsoft Office,
you’ll find OpenOffice 3.0 more than satisfactory. Chances are good
that even if you have a rival office suite, you’ll find something to
like (such as a database or drawing feature) in OpenOffice 3.0.
Source : http://www.macnn.com/
