X out of 10

If you’ve ever owned a computer, at one point or another you’ve probably realized that Microsoft Office is at the same time absolutely necessary and hideously expensive. You may have even taken to shady dealings, or reached out to your cousin’s boyfriend’s sister who works in Redmond, in order to obtain your copy.

While you’ve been doing that, hundreds (thousands?) of nerds around the globe have spent their free time creating OpenOffice.org (OOo), a suite of critical applications that mimics Office’s functionality, but not its price tag. Not only is OOo free as in beer, but it’s also free as in speech—a geeky way of saying that anybody can modify its code to suit their purposes.

Luckily for Mac users, the enterprising individuals at Planamesa Software have done just that, taking the visually un-stunning OOo software, and adapting it to fit in with the Mac’s Aqua user interface, while also making the software far easier to install and run.

The result is every bit as good as Microsoft’s Office:Mac releases (which are themselves fantastic), but without the resulting dent to your pocketbook. Of course, it can open native Office files and save in Office formats as well. Redmond should be worried.

X = 8.9

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