Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

We wrote a column last week saying how happy we were with NeoOffice on our new MacBook Pro, having previously been a very satisfied user of Open Office, of which NeoOffice was a fork for the Mac. Are we confused yet?  Now, Open Office has released a new and improved Beta, and one of the builds on the list is a Mac version that no longer requires the user to load X11 on her or his Mac. This version of Open Office will run on the native OSX Aqua.

A spokesman for OpenOffice.org says that the new version sports a very Mac-like look and feel. The company goes on to say that the new version “integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.” The new Open Office version also adds a large number of additions and improvements that are expected to carry the software past the current version of NeoOffice.

Both office suites are free, and both compare well to the Microsoft Office suite. The development group at Open Office is larger and better established than that at NeoOffice, so this new OO version can be expected to win the features battle. That does not always mean that the same side will win the quality battles, though Open Office is well known for the quality of their offerings.

We plan to download the Open Office v.3.0 suite for windows and for Mac and put the suite through its paces.