Section 71. Productivity Suites

71. Productivity Suites

Microsoft Office for the Mac offers features (including project management features in Entourage) PC users envy, but other options are available.

Open-source NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org, free) reads and writes Office documents and features an intuitive interface designed for OS X.

Apple's Pages (included in the iWork suite) lacks Word's arcane features, but designs exquisite documents in minutes. Keynote (also from iWork) outperforms PowerPoint, offering templates, smoother animations, and stable media integration.

Office apps from Mariner.com strip away seldom-used features, emphasizing ease of use and uncluttered interface design. Mariner Write and Mariner Calc provide Word and Excel compatibility for as little as $79.95.