Pages vs. Open Office for the Mac Mini

As I indicated yesterday, I purchased Pages for $19.99 from the App Store. So far, I'm loving it.

Open Office's Writer

I had already installed the Mac OS version of Open Office a few days ago. I'm fairly familiar with their office suite, so OO's Writer program didn't offer any surprises for me. Basically, Writer is a scaled-down version of Microsoft Word. However, I can't deny that it is indeed a very powerful word processor with a thriving open-source community that offers decent support. And you can't beat the price: FREE!

Writer comes with a variety of other programs, such as spreadsheet, database, a presentation tool, etc. Strangely enough, you can only work with one instance of the program at any given time  At least that's how it works with my installation. So, in other words, you can't have two Open Office programs running at the same time on your desktop (say, Writer and the spreadsheet program). I don't know if there's a workaround for this. It's certainly possible to have multiple instance running in Windows. (Sorry, that's completely untrue! You can easily work with multiple instances of any of the OO programs. Sorry for the mistake! It has taken me a bit of time to adapt to the Mac OS interface, including the fixed placement of the menu at the top of the screen.)

If you are interested in trying out the free Open Office suite, please go to http://www.openoffice.org.

Pages

Pages is way faster and slicker than Writer and if your Mac didn't come pre-loaded with iWork, $19.99 isn't a lot to spend for a quality word processor.

Unlike Writer, Pages adopts the feel and style of the Mac environment. I know that may seem inconsequential but I honestly believe that it contributes to productivity.

Again, Pages is fast. It loads quickly and I didn't experience the occasional lag that was present in OO's Writer program. OO requires that you load the Java Runtime into memory--so that's why it's less responsive than Apple's product.

Unlike Writer, Pages offers a wide variety of attractive templates to get you going. So, if you need to get a pretty business letter or document produced in as little time as possible, Apple has already done some of the work for you. Of course, you can start the program in basic word processing mode--that is, a blank page.

I was impressed with the auto spellcheck feature. It's more fluid than Writer's (or Word's for that matter) and rather reminiscent of the autocorrect that's featured on my Windows Phone.

Pages is compatible with other word processors and allows you to export your project to the PDF, DOC and ePub formats.

I was also impressed by the ease at which I could create outlined documents. Of course, you can create outlines in Writer but like Word, the process is less than intuitive. Both programs force you to use a weird combination of keystrokes to indent and/or change levels. Pages automates the process with the tab and shift-tab keys. That's the way it's done in WordPerfect and I just can't understand why OO or MS haven't replicated that process in their own products.

Oh, one last small detail which I appreciated: The word count is displayed at the bottom of your document. MS Word features this option too, but OO's Writer does not.

Conclusion: If you afford to spend the extra pesos, get Pages from the App Store. It's an app that's both powerful and streamlined. Quite possibly, the best word processor I have ever had the pleasure of using.