Just got a new (to me) Macbook Pro for law school starting in a month. The previous owner didn't have office or document editing software other than the text edit program. Should I splurge on the MS office package for Mac even though it doesn't include half of the programs (publisher namely) or just spend $20 on Pages? Also, are there "pages" equivalents to power point & excel that someone could suggest?

thanks!

7/23/2013 3:38:07 PM

Office 365

7/23/2013 4:34:21 PM

office.live.com is free
libreoffice is free
docs.google.com is free

7/23/2013 4:36:22 PM

You can probably get a free copy, or at least a very very cheap of MS office from your school.

7/23/2013 4:58:36 PM

I looked at the bookstore website and the cheapest I can get office is $80

I'll look at the free sites

7/23/2013 6:49:02 PM

Depending on what school you are at, you may be able to get it through Microsoft HUP for $10.
http://www.microsofthup.com/

7/23/2013 8:04:47 PM

Best bet is to install Windows 7/8 on your Macbook and get Office 365 University. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/university/


It's $79.99 for a 4 year subscription. You get Publisher, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and most importantly OneNote. OneNote will become your best friend as a student.

You can blah blah the "free" alternatives all you like, but they are all pieces of shit for anyone who actually relies on spreadsheets, presentations or journaling for their day to day activities.

There's really no good alternative to Excel. Pages sucks, Google spreadsheets suck, LibreOffice Calc sucks.

For Publisher, there's a million decent alternatives. What are you actually using publisher for?
For PowerPoint, Keynote ($19.99) is an awesome alternative and in my opinion the best part of the iWork suite on OSX.
For Visio, there's and Omnigraffle ($99) which is 1000x better than Visio. It's also a decent replacement for Publisher depending on what you're doing.
For OneNote, Evernote is the only thing I've used that comes close.
For Word, unless you're doing peer reviewed documents (or writing a thesis), any free alternative will work well. Otherwise, Word is pretty much the only option. It's change tracking, reference management and notation features are completely missing in competitive products (last I checked anyway)

7/23/2013 10:53:29 PM

OpenOffice $free

7/23/2013 11:30:22 PM

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/48/computer-technical-help/open-office-whats-catch-841069/

open office it is...unless I download it and hate it.

Thanks for the info everyone!

7/24/2013 12:21:20 PM

LibreOffice >> OpenOffice

7/24/2013 1:55:29 PM

How much is law school and you don't want to pay $80 o get full office with OneNote? That logic doesn't add up.

7/24/2013 4:54:08 PM

^^

7/24/2013 6:37:13 PM

^^ law school is expensive, but I don't see the logic in using any more of the loan money than absolutely necessary when I am paying like 8% interest on it...I'd rather use a free program and be able to return that $$ to the federal gov't so I can eliminate as much debt as possible

[Edited on July 26, 2013 at 11:11 AM. Reason : ^]

7/26/2013 11:11:15 AM

Libreoffice looks good too...what makes it so much better? I like the export to PDF function...

7/26/2013 11:15:16 AM

libreoffice the fork of open office still updated by the community. open office was acquired by oracle when they bought SUN and they community won't touch it with a 10 foot pole anymore, so it's lagging behind.

7/27/2013 8:24:46 AM

^^
Any Mac app will be able to print to PDF -- when you go to File > Print, you'll see "PDF" down in the bottom left corner.

LibreOffice is good if you're determined not to spend the $$. Both in law school and in actual practice, most of the files you'll be sending back and forth will be PDFs anyhow (unless sending a .doc/.docx file to a professor so they can use "Track Changes").

Beyond that, though, I largely agree w/ Noen: Keynote is a stellar replacement for PowerPoint, but otherwise the MS Office Word+Excel apps are the only "good" options.

I never found any use for OneNote / Visio / the other MS apps in law school, but that's also b/c I did a piss poor job at taking notes

[Edited on July 27, 2013 at 6:07 PM. Reason : I also concede to being a curmudgeon still using Office:mac 2008 in my law practice...]

7/27/2013 6:05:14 PM

Make sure you learn how to correctly redact a pdf.

7/28/2013 12:05:35 AM

Found out this weekend that they will install MS Office on my laptop for free during orientation...

Thanks for all your help guys!!
I'll keep all this in mind for the future

7/29/2013 1:12:45 PM