Originally Posted by
MapleLeaf
So I never made it to the Mac Store last (stuck at work) but will go there today.
My big issue now is software, which is being discussed as of late.
My email / calendar is in outlook, I use MS Office frequently (powerpoint, word and excel regularly) - the rest is just filler apps. Will NeoOffice run these or will I need to purchase an office software licence for them?
I would prefer to avoid dualboot, i.e. loading windows if I can.. rather go clean all the way.
For your calendar, iCal is pretty capable, but it has a few quirks that irritate me, so I've been playing with Sunbird (free, Open Source app from the Mozilla team).
For email most people use the built in mail.app that ships with OSX. Its got the advantage of fitting into the Spotlight search nicely. My only gripe about mail.app (which is quite nice in most regards) is that its missing IDLE support. Thats the functionality that lets you see new mail as soon as it hits the server, verses waiting for the application to check it every 5 or 10 minutes. If you are coming off outlook connected to an exchange server then you may miss that feature too. Both Eudora (free, closed source) and Thunderbird (from mozilla team, free opensource) have IDLE support. Thunderbird's interface is a little sparse, but I've been using it for a few weeks and really like it. The MS Office trail that comes on the mac will have Entourage which is an outlook-like app of the mac... I couldn't stand it frankly , but you might want to try it (its lacking true support for exchange, so it functions like an IMAP client basically).
I'd suggest looking at NeoOffice first. I will say that I've found its presentation app to be a little lackluster in the template and design department. Any mac will come with a trial copy of Keynote, which in my opinion is a powerpoint killer... They also come with a trial of MS Office for Mac...so try NeoOffice and Keynote and MS Office and see which you like best.