From: Oliver Jones [mailto:oliver@deeper.co.nz]

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

Hmm. Same place I was looking before. Lots of the mirrors report 404 errors. I managed to get a copy from one of the mirrors in the end though. After installing X11 and OOo I fired it up and it's about as good as you could expect for a Unix app on a Mac. Ie, not very good. It would do for a geek like me. I could put up with it being completely different to everything else. But on reflection I think I need a more "MacOS" like app for my mother. So I downloaded the MS Office:Mac 30 day trial. I will give that a going over and see if it is worth the $700+ it costs....

I don't know much about Mac Office software, I never need anything like that, but from what I hear, many Mac users don't like either of MS Office or Open Office. If word processing is all your mother needs, it might be worth checking out some of these instead...

Nisus Writer http://www.nisus.com/Express/

Abiword http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/abiword/

NeoOffice/J (Open Office with Java UI) http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php

If you're after any other software, it might be worth having a look through the categories here: http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ And http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/