Section 80. Spreadsheets

80. Spreadsheets

In the PC universe, Microsoft Excel is the first and last word in spreadsheets. Excel for the Mac provides total compatibility, but you may also be interested in more streamlined alternatives.

NeoOffice (www.planamesa.com, free, shown in Figure 33) includes Calc, which fuses all the power and compatibility of OpenOffice with the glossy, user-friendly look and feel of the Mac OS X Aqua user environmentfor free.

Figure 33. Calc, the spreadsheet application in NeoOffice, wraps most of Excel's features in a beautiful Aqua interface and is absolutely free.

Mariner Calc (www.marinersoftware.com, $59.95) starts faster than Excel and requires less of your precious hard drive space after it is installed. It reads and writes Excel files, and its tables can be dragged and dropped into other Mac applications (such as Pages) with ease.