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Weblog:   The Mac/Thinkpad Shuffle
Subject:   iBook Results
Date:   2005-02-01 09:38:36
From:   Jonathan Gennick
Response to: iBook Results

First off, I hated even saying anything negative about OpenOffice to begin with. It's a good product. We use it a lot. And I know a lot of people have worked hard to evenget it to run on theMac at all. That said, here's all I can tell you:


OpenOffice doesn't run as a native, Mac application. I had to download and install an X-Window server from Apple's web site. This is a minor inconvenience. Neither my daughter nor I are particularly bothered by the fact that OpenOffice doesn't "look" like a standard, Mac app.


Things got worse though, when we opened some of her existing, OpenOffice files, of which she has many. The text was unpleasant to look at.


Worse, when we try to apply italics or bold to a piece of text, the text does not change appearance. I'm guessing that the italic/bold settings are being applied, but visually we don't see them.


And that's pretty much all I know at this point. My daughter's gone back to school, and I've promised to buy her iWork, which I need to get around to doing.


Despite the problems, it's fortunate to have OpenOffice on the Mac at all. At least she can open her files, save them as RTF (or in Word format), and import them into iPages. And, because everything's on the mac, she can convert files at her leisure.