The Top Five Microsoft Office Alternatives for Mac Users
Article by Peachpit Press
Need the functionality of Microsoft Office on your Mac, but can't afford its hefty price tag? Tired of waiting for a universal version of Office for your Intel Mac? Ryan Faas gives the ins and outs of some low-cost and free alternatives.
Mariner Software
Mariner Software has been developing office tools for Macs for many years. It offers a word processor known as MarinerWrite and a spreadsheet tool known as MarinerCalc. Mariner’s offerings are significantly less expensive than their Microsoft counterparts (price varies depending on selected packages).
MarinerWrite offers a very clean interface with the majority of features required by most users. It includes support for styled text, tables, text formatting, and search and replace functionality. It also includes a built-in spell checker. For many users, MarinerWrite’s capabilities and interface will be sufficient and easy to use.
MarinerCalc is a solid spreadsheet solution. Like MarinerWrite, it offers a clean and easy-to-navigate interface. It supports a wide variety of functions and the ability to create charts very easily. While good for many consumers, some professionals will notice that a number of Excel’s advanced features are not duplicated in MarinerCalc.
Although good for consumers, particularly in terms of price, ease of use, and support, Mariner’s software does have one Achilles heal as an Office replacement. They don’t offer the ability to save to native Office file types. Support for saving to Office-compatible file formats such as RTF and SLYK is included (as well as the ability to designate saved files as associated with Word or Excel), which mitigates this limitation somewhat. It should also be noted that both MarinerWrite and MarinerCalc can open (if not save) Word and Excel files.
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