An os X question

[liralen]

So my Dad has a Mac. He's an old research professor type who felt lost without a command line when my sister first bought Mom and him the machine. It was ostensibly for Mom's sake, but she still won't touch the machine. They just got an OS X upgrade for Christmas from Kathy, too. So he now has a command line, yay! Anyway... they get a lot mail from their friend that happens to be in WinWord format, and Dad's really frustrated that he can't read Word format without shelling out $500 to Microsoft, so he just refuses to do that, not that I blame him. I wouldn't, either.

But what can he do? Is there something that can run on OS X that will read Word format for a reasonable price?

I know about OpenOffice.org, but they seem to only have versions for Linix, Solaris, and two flavors of Windows.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

As far as I can remember, the 30 day trial download of Word for OS X turns into a viewer when it times out...

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Ooooo!!! Perfect!!

[niherlas.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the Office Test Drive turning into a viewer after 30 days, but the Test Drive has a significant limitation - no printing.

icWord is a $20 Word viewer for OSX that also supports printing. They also have a 30-day free trial version.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Interesting. One for the investigation pile...

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Cool! It's good to have another alternative. I don't know how much printing Dad actually does, but Mom like printouts... I'll have to look at this.

[mallen.livejournal.com]

Do a google search for "antiword" Antiword will take a .doc and turn it into ASCII text or postscript suitable for printing. It doesn't handle VERY complex documents, but it's great for memos and stuff like that.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yay! That was easy. I'll forward that to my Dad, too, so he can choose.

Thanks!!