Looking for alternatives to Word, prompted by this bit I read this morning.
The only really problem that I have had is with Office documents that folks send to my personal email.
I could, of course, just install MacOffice (which is a really great product), but I wanted to see what it would be like to be one of those “M$ haters” (which I clearly am not — since I work there and love it).
It turns out that iWork and OpenOffice aren’t too bad.
I couldn’t use it at work — I doubt anyone could actually — but it has gotten me past a few personal hurdles.
In short, it is very clear to me that this is a “Office World” and I am a “Office Boy” — and I think everyone else is too.
Not all of us want to be, though. I want to use something for writing that is simple (like TextEdit or TextWrangler) but not so complex as Word. I want basic text styling and fonts (one of the problems of having your first daily computer experience be the Macintosh, even if it was circa 1987). But I don’t need table tools, drawing tools, or all the scientific apparatus.
I used Mellel for my NaNoWriMo effort and liked it OK. It has lots of features I’ll never use but it is a writer’s tool.
I also took a look at Pages, part of iWork (well, not just part of it: half of it, with Keynote).
It’s OK, and close to what I want, but it doesn’t offer much more than TextEdit.
I think Mellel makes the most sense at US$49. iWork/Pages is $79 for something less fully-featured.
Any other options I have missed?