I’ve recently re-checked out NeoOffice. NeoOffice is the Mac version of OpenOffice and is a great alternative to Microsoft Office. NeoOffice is free which makes it $400 less that the Microsoft version.

The download is big, but it’s a program that sure can do a lot. The interface is very nice and it makes the program look stunning. It also loads quite quickly on my Intel iMac.

One of the things I really liked about NeoOffice is that it can read and write Microsoft formats including .docx. I do have to interact with these files so it’s nice to have an easy solution.

I’m very unhappy with Adobe right now. I called yesterday and asked them if Adobe Acrobat Standard could convert Word documents to PDFs on a Mac and keep all images and clickable links. They said yes so the program was bought. However, none of my documents contain clickable links after they’ve been converted from Word to a PDF.

So I asked why on Adobe’s forms and I was informed by a user that clickable links in PDFs from Word are not possible on the Mac. What??!! I made a point to ask specifically for this feature on my Mac and they told me it was possible! What a crock!

I searched for a web based Microsoft Excel today and I found iRows. All the basics, none of the bloat or cost!!

Today was a snow day and I was told not to come into work but rather work from home. Great idea except I treat my home computer differently than my work computer. For one, I didn’t install Microsoft Office.

I’ve had Writely for Word documents for a while now and it’s just amazing. Upload Word files, make edits, export them again and it’s all good. So, I went looking for a web based Excel. That’s when I found iRows.

Recently I’ve been using a free service called Writely. Writely is a web based word processing application that is amazing.

Features include:

• Full WYSIWYG Editing (in browsers that support it)
• Import abilities for Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf) OpenOffice (.odt, .sxw), HTML, Text (.txt)
• Export abilities for all the above and PDF
• Sharing abilities with anyone.
• Social editing so that more than one can edit the same document.
• Privacy controls.
• Ability to ‘Star’ important documents. (like Gmail)
• Beautiful Interface