14 DAY TRIAL // The people at NeoOffice.org have released a new version of their popular, open source office suite of applications for Mac OS X, NeoOffice. Version 3.0.1 adds Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard support, and includes NeoOffice Mobile, which provides a way to securely share NeoOffice files with other users and other computers.
“In Mac OS X 10.6, Apple made many changes that caused all previous versions of NeoOffice to fail to install or fail to launch,” the team of developers in charge with the suite says. “This release is the first NeoOffice release that should install and launch on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.”
“NeoOffice Mobile provides a way to securely share NeoOffice files with other users and other computers. It works by allowing you to ‘publish’ a document from within NeoOffice to the NeoOffice Mobile server using a secure, encrypted connection,” NeoOffice.org explains. “Once documents are published, they can be viewed using secure connections from regular web browsers or web-enabled mobile devices. Also, for NeoOffice users with NeoOffice Mobile installed, previously published documents can be opened directly in NeoOffice.”
According to the release notes, other changes include native file-locking support for local and networked volumes, support for a Mac OS X user default to determine which module opens when launching the program and significant speed improvements in spreadsheet formula calculation and menubar display.
“Some of the features in NeoOffice 2.2.6 have changed and behave differently in NeoOffice 3.0.1,” a warning on behalf of the development team goes. “These feature changes are due to feature changes in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code and cannot be undone. So if you rely on NeoOffice 2.2.6 for critical work, we recommend that you take some [of] the time to get accustomed to NeoOffice 3.0.1 before using it for critical work. NeoOffice 2.2.6 is still supported and you can download it from the NeoOffice 2.2.6 download page.”
NeoOffice is based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, integrating native Mac features. The full-featured set of office applications boasts the ability to import, edit and exchange files with other office programs. Most Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint files are supported, as are Excel VBA Macros. The software requires that you have at least 512 MB of memory and 400 MB of free disk space. The download link (available below) includes all major versions of the suite, complete with the latest patches for each version in part.