I’m sticking with Microsoft Office 2004 on my Mac for now, but for the rest of you, take a look at NeoOffice. Information Week has a full review of the free Office suite for Mac OS X 10.3 or better. Before the "but I can run OpenOffice for free" comments, let me explain that NeoOffice is essentially a port of OpenOffice at its core; the difference is that NeoOffice is Mac-like in appearance thanks to the Aqua interface.
Included in the free productivity suite is:
- Writer, a word processor that includes support for Word 2007 docs
- Calc for spreadsheets including support for Excel macros
- Impress for presentations
- Base, a database tool
- Draw for….uh….drawing. ;)
I specifically mentioned the support for Excel macros since it’s been reported that Microsoft is dropping VBA support in Office 2008 for Mac; if true, that’s a real shame and will disappoint power-users of Office. Those same folks will find plenty to like in NeoOffice however; I’m blown away with how much the app looks and feels like the traditional Office Suite!
Over the weekend, I started dabbling with Google Docs as a free productivity app, but I’m still a little leery of housing my important info on-line. With NeoOffice, you can use a free office suite, but still keep all of your data local; the best of both worlds. You always have the option of storing any data you want on-line through a number of free and pay-for storage sites.
Again, I purchased Office 2004 for Mac; my reliance on a hosted Exchange server working with Entourage far outweighs a free suite for me personally since I’m in e-mail much more than I’m in docs or spreadsheets. How about you?

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