Installing openoffice on the mac

[Fragony]

Ok help.

How??

I download it, get this weird thingie where I can drag it into applications, but it never shows up.

[Banquo's Ghost]

If you have Open Office from the official site, then IIRC it will only run if you have an environment known as X11 installed. Most Macs won't have this by default, so you will have to install it yourself from the original install discs. This is a "Linux-like" environment that allows OSX to run unix -designed programmes.

I've never used it, and suspect it's a pain. There should be lots of support out there if you google.

Alternatively, you could download NeoOffice here, which is a slightly older version of OO, but installs directly onto OSX (I think).

Or get a nice copy of iWork.

[Fragony]

Got it to work

Still have to get used to the interface, worked with mac before but that one was already packed with all essentials; *click* I can do that.

Got any more tips on must have software? Keyword is cool gimmicks and awesomness in general gimme nice and shiny.

[Banquo's Ghost]

I guess it depends what you need.

For personal finance account software, I can certainly recommend iBank from iggsoft. For writing and research, I couldn't do without Scrivener. I use Pages from iWork (Apple) for writing and Keynote for presentations, along with TextWrangler for HTML work and Yummy for FTP.

There's also ClamXav - Macs are very unlikely to get viruses and I believe that there are none in the wild, but one can never be too careful.

The estates use some heavy duty database and finance software, but that's no use to you - or me, in day to day life.

As for widgets, a must have is iStat but there's so many, it will entirely depend what you like.

If you click on the apple icon in your menu bar (at the top left) you will see an option that takes you to Mac OSX Software, which has lots of recommended apps and widgets.