Looks good! Hopefully OpenOffice/NeoOffice would finally be usable on MacOSX :-)

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Java applications like this need to be killed off immediately. They're the most horrible things imaginable to work with.

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An important piece of information that you left out, that might have been useful... is this a Universal Binary?

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Richard, maybe you should try it before you go bashing someone else's hard work. It may not be perfect, but NeoOffice is leaps and bounds better than running OpenOffice under X11.

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#3: As far as I understand it: NeoOffice runs in Java, so it should run fine on PPC and Intel since they both have their own optimized Java environments. I tried searching all over the place for this too, but couldn't find a peep about it on their pages, which led me to believe my theory might be right.

Anyone else know for sure?

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When you pay for the access, and enter the download site, you are presented with 2 links, 1 for Intel and 1 for PPC.

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Some confusion here. NeoOffice _IS_ OpenOffice.org: to be specific, the most recent MAC OS X port (2.0.3), but the X-windows based implementation of the cross-platform 'VCL' GUI toolkit that OOo uses is replaced by a native Aqua implementation. This implementation uses a variety of languages and APIs for different jobs, including much Java. But not the Java Cocoa bindings. This does mean the Java JRE has to be loaded as well as the main OOo code, so it is slow to start if it is the first app to start off Java. And it likes a lot of RAM. But it's perfectly useable on my 1.3 G Powerbook with only 512k RAM (10.4.7)
It isn't a universal binary: there are separate downlods for the PPC & i386 architectures.

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Wow This seems sooo nice! That Early Access Program does sound cool! Although right now, I don't thinks many people will pay. I dn't need a text editor, for about another month, when shool starts, but this is still cool.

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Uh, yeah. I liked this very little since you have to pay money to get access (even if it's only temporarily) to open source software w/o compiling it myself... and I like even less, now that I know it's written in Java. Likely I'll end-up trying it once it's free, but I don't expect it to be terribly impressive.

Love it all you like, support and defend it all you want, but I'll be sticking with Microsoft Office.

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Yea, open source projects that try to somehow find a way to pay for all their bills suck. Those jerks. They should be paying it all out of pocket, and forking over ALL their free time - besides their day job - just because I too believe open source software means 'it's all free'. What a bunch of selfish, no-good jerks. In fact, I really wish there was a way to un-donate to them; so I could somehow take money away from them and put it into Microsoft's pockets, as they clearly are a shining beacon of exceptional software development, management and business ethics.

*end bitter_sarcasm*

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openoffice suckssssssssss. this app is fast, but inherently flawed. i submitted the story to tuaw like a month ago when the 1st universal version became public.

pages ftw.

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I'll stick with my free web based office from http://ww.ZoHo.com Spreadsheets, Word and more. All online, no install necessary.

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OOps, for a w that should be http://www.zoho.com

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I've been trying the new NeoOffice suite and I think it's great. I'm anxious to try the newer Aqua interface. It does take me about 30 seconds to start it when I first start, but speed is great after it's up and running.

I highly recommend it.

Randy

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The only reason I have not been using open office is the hassle even installing it on a mac.

I did not know about Neo-Office, I may give this a try even though I already have Mac:Office.

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Re: Post #10, made by David Chartier

I truly enjoyed the above entry. My only criticism of Mr. Chartier's remarks are his last one - *end bitter_sarcasm*, because anyone that couldn't figure out how apropos his comments were to the state of mind of people who think that just about everything should be free - music, software, bandwidth - everything except the work that they themselves do for a living, well they wouldn't get the subtlety nor the dead-on accuracy of what he said anyway. IMO.

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I've been using the Alpha, still free I believe, on my intel imac. Works great on 512MB.

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Jason,

NeoOffice is *very* easy to install. Just download the .dmg file and then run the installer package on the image.

Cheers!

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I'm a writer who just bought an Intel MacBook and find my very old copy of MS Office for OS X doesn't run very well on the new computer. With too many kids to have much spare cash left over after the MacBook purchase, I cannot bear to spend the upgrade price for MS Office, and I've even been looking around for a cheaper solution than the venerable Nisus -- although I didn't expect to find anything.

I tried NeoOffice, the version before this new beta version, and I cannot believe that this software is available for free. My needs are simple. A lot of word processing, but all I need is a file format I can submit electronically; I don't do any desktop publishing. And in a spreadsheet all I require is use of my very spare household budget worksheet. NeoOffice does both, just fine and just fast enough.

I'll likely buy Nisus when the budget recovers from the new baby, but NeoOffice will do more than well until then. Again, depending on your needs -- I wouldn't run a magazine on it -- NeoOffice may provide plenty of ability for no expense.

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I work a lot with EndNote, which does not support (or is not suppported by) OpenOffice / NeoOffice. When (if) using EndNote under NeoOffice becomes possible - byebye MS...

P.S. NeoOffice 2.0 Beta now supports native OS X dialogs for file browsing and saving!

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