Apple OS-X 10.8 Mountain Lion

[Bazzy]

Well I paid my $21 AUD upgrade fee, downloaded 4GB from the app store, the upgrade was over in an hour or so.

Just looking through the new features now.

So far I like the new iMessage facility.

No problems with any apps after upgrade so far.

Going to have a play around with the dictation stuff soon.

Apple - OS X Mountain Lion - Use your Mac in so many new ways.

[Sailing into trouble]

Bassy,

Just bought a mac Pro. What word processor would you recommend?

[Bazzy]

^ I only have experience with Pages (Apple) and Word for Mac. Pages was easy to get started and was good enough to do a professional resume and save in different formats eg ms word.

Since that time I have obtained a copy of MS Office for Mac, not used it much, but it is pretty much the same as Office on a PC.

Best value would be Pages I think.

[TizMe]

iMessage was available to download free with Lion about 3 months ago.

I don't really see any compelling reason to upgrade, but for $21 I might just do it in a few weeks time anyway.

[Butterfly]

iMessage ?

[slackula]

What word processor would you recommend?

LibreOffice is free and is coming along in leaps and bounds. It can usually import/export most MS Office files but there can be issues with some complex formatting and it doesn't seem to handle document annotations very well when importing Office files that have a lot of them.

Then again, Office files often don't seem to render well between different versions of their own programs so it's not really surprising that Libre might be a little behind.

The Register had a nice little round-up of a few free (or free-ish) things for a modern Mac a couple of days ago:

Ten... freeware gems for new Macs ? Reg Hardware

[SEA Traveler]

... Pages was easy to get started and was good enough to do a professional resume and save in different formats eg ms word.

what is the process for saving a 1st time prepared document in "Pages" as an MS Word doc?

[Bazzy]

what is the process for saving a 1st time prepared document in "Pages" as an MS Word doc?

File -> Export and select from Word, PDF, and a few others.

[Bazzy]

but there can be issues with some complex formatting and it doesn't seem to handle document annotations very well when importing Office files that have a lot of them.

Which is exactly why I wouldn't bother for any serious activity like my work.

[slackula]

Which is exactly why I wouldn't bother for any serious activity like my work. Why would you want the bother?

Different versions of Windows running differing versions of Office also screw up rendering of Office docs depending on the fonts installed on a system etc.

I've found that the only sure way to make something like a CV render for the recipient the way you want it to is to use pdf. It makes for a larger file size but that isn't so much of an issue these days, but inter-compatibility of Office is rather bad.

Last time I bothered to check Office still hadn't managed to make the Print dialogue boxes uniform throughout the various components let alone document rendering.

[SEA Traveler]

what is the process for saving a 1st time prepared document in "Pages" as an MS Word doc?

File -> Export and select from Word, PDF, and a few others.

got it. thanks Bazzy.

[The Fresh Prince]

I downloaded mine last week. Think it was 19$ US. Still haven't got used to all the scrolling being the other way around but I think that was available on the last version. (Which I skipped)

I like the AirDrop. Used that yesterday. Also like the full screen web browser with right hand swipe back to finder.

What word processor would you recommend?

I use Neo Office. It's free and totally compatible with word/excell/powerpoint documents.

NeoOffice Home

[Bazzy]

got it. thanks Bazzy.

ya welcome Mr traveller.

[Bazzy]

I haven't had time to play much, more to come.

Regarding the free MS Office clones, in my work I get a good view of the effort that is taken to program applications, and I can't understand any business model that promises to provide a quality product for free. So I'm not able to trust free versions of any software, but I am sure that they have a place for some of us. By the way the resume got me the job I wanted.

Pages is $21 AUD on the app store.

You can't buy MS Word for mac by itself, but in the Office 2011 package along with Excel and Powerpoint, the MS store in Australia quotes $189. Or you can get a job like I have and the boss gives it to you for free.

[slackula]

and I can't understand any business model that promises to provide a quality product for free

It is not generally a business model. It grew out of a philosophy that what is created with software has more value than the software that facilitated the creation to happen, and software needs support and that is where comps like RedHat make their money.

Also, if somebody gave you a typewriter and you wrote a great book on it would you credit the typewriter?

Or you can get a job like I have and the boss gives it to you for free.

Your definition of 'free' is flawed. Your boss has hired you to do a job, as a part of that arrangement your boss has given you tools (software) to do the job and would have factored the cost of such tools into the compensation for your labour at some level.

If you haven't read it before Stallman's The Cathedral and the Bazaar is quite interesting on things like this.

He's a bit of a nut at times but he is always interesting.

[Bazzy]

quimbian

Let's keep this thread "on-topic" and I'll start up another one to discuss 'free' vs paid for software.

[slackula]

Let's keep this thread "on-topic" and I'll start up another one to discuss 'free' vs paid for software.

You are correct, please accept my apologies.

[Bazzy]

no apology necessary. I'll start another thread.

[Bazzy]

later, maybe tomorrow, had enough for today...... Go ahead yourself, I think its a good discussion to be had.