Office on the Mac

[#1]

Hi
My son at uni is the proud owner of a nice new mac book (he's studying audio and music technology, so macs are de rigeur (if that's spelled right))
His lecturer puts all the lecture notes on the network (very nice of him), and uses Office for Mac.  My son was trying the mac version of Works, but the formatting gets all confused.  Will Open Office for Mac do the job? Or will he have to fork out the money for Mac Office?
Alternatively, is there a cheap way of using M$ Office on the mac (I was thinking of getting the home and student edition for £60 ish from Amazon, that includes three licences, so we could share it.)
Can anyone help?
John

[#2]

Open office is free of charge.
It costs nothing to try it - or use it 
My kids use nothing else (at home) - they are forced to use M$ at school.

[#3]

Almost - it's 'de rigueur'.
Anyway, welcome, at least to your son, to the Mac - as a music student who uses one myself, I can indeed testify that they're great for the job. Regarding your query though, I think the best thing to do is just try out the various options. Open Office can be downloaded for free, and Macs normally come with a demo of Office either pre-installed or available to install from the DVDs that come with the computer. (I say 'normally' because I don't know if the new ones do, but the old ones certainly did.) So just give them a go and see what works best.
One word of caution though: buying the £60 Home and Student edition of Office won't be of any help to your son, as that's the PC edition - the Mac edition retails for £20 more. Of course, you could buy a Mac for yourself so you can share the Mac edition...

[#4]

There's also the free Neo Office - never used it myself, but it's supposed to be compatible with standard MS Office docs. I'd download both Neo Office and Open Office and see if one of these will do the job.

[#5]

Neo Office is just a port of Open Office to OS X, however with OO 3 there is better native OS X support so might not be as good an option as it was.

[#6]

Quote from: Be3G

One word of caution though: buying the £60 Home and Student edition of Office won't be of any help to your son, as that's the PC edition - the Mac edition retails for £20 more. Of course, you could buy a Mac for yourself so you can share the Mac edition...

That's why I asked if there was a (cheap) way to use the M$ version on the Mac.  I've heard of Boot Camp, but that's an extra cost (and wouldn't I need to pay for a copy of Windows as well?)
He's going to download Open Office for the Mac and give it a try.
As for buying a Mac for myself, I'd love to, but there's no way we can afford 2 Macs in the family!  We have 3 other computers at home (plus my other son's older Gateway laptop that he still has), so three licences for the Home and Student edition of M$ Office will not be wasted entirely.
Thanks for all then input.  I'll let you know how he gets on with the OO
John

[#7]

Ahh sorry I misinterpreted your comment about using Office cheaply - I didn't realise you were asking if there was a cheap way of using the PC version specifically. Boot Camp is free as it's part of the operating system (your son should find it in his ~/Applications/Utilities folder), but you do indeed need to purchase a copy of Windows to get it to work, although you can use an OEM version if you so desire and aren't too concerned by the legalities. A cheaper solution would be for your son to purchase CrossOver Mac - this is £26, and allows certain Windows apps (Office 2007 is officially supported) to run in the Mac OS without using a copy of Windows itself.

[#8]

Trouble is you cant suggest a man in Hulls position to condone Piracy, If he gets caught the penalties are multiplied many times over.  Officials dont do anything illegal if they are sensible - aint that right John 

[#9]

Fair point Pierre, but I like the look of crossover, and for £26, it's worth a try. 
John

[#10]

Hmm. I don't know why you thought I was talking about anything to do with piracy Pierre - I certainly wouldn't condone it and, as far as I'm aware, it'd be against the forum rules to too. All I suggested was that John's son could purchase an OEM copy of Windows to save money on a retail copy - doing so is a bit of a legal grey area, but it's certainly not piracy.
Unless you're thinking that CrossOver is a bit suspicious... in which case, it's not; it uses Windows APIs to run certain pieces of Windows software without having to have the actual operating system installed as a host.

[#11]

no it was the OEM, I sure Hulls wont mind me saying, bacause he has before on the Forum, but he works for Trading Standards ::), one of my local Officers

[#12]

For what it's worth, CodeWeavers are offering their CrossOver software for free today only.

[#13]

Must be popular, their web site's fallen over 
I downloaded the software for him, and left my email address requesting a serial number, so it's worth a try.  He tells me that Open Office is "all right" (but he is a student.)  Except that he can't open just the word processor (for example)  you have to open the whole suite and then select the word processor activity. He doesn't think it's a major draw back, just a bit fiddly.  I'm sure when I looked at Open Office portable, I had the option to go straight to the relevant software.
John

[#14]

Quote from: Be3G

For what it's worth, CodeWeavers are offering their CrossOver software for free today only.

Thanks for that, just downloaded the Linux and Mac variety..

[#15]

Quote from: hulls

He tells me that Open Office is "all right" (but he is a student.)  Except that he can't open just the word processor (for example)  you have to open the whole suite and then select the word processor activity.

Stuporglue might have the solution for that.