I’ve always disliked Microsoft’s Office Suite of applications – they just are too “bloaty” for me and I try to stay out of them as much as possible.

As a result, I’m always open to other alternatives, especially Google Docs and OpenOffice! But, this was the first time I heard about NeoOffice, which is a full-featured set of apps (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation) for Mac OS X.

It was built to adapt to the unique needs of Mac users and takes Oracle’s OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 office suite and adding improvements such as:

• Extremely stable Mac OS X code that has been in daily use by hundreds of thousands of NeoOffice users since 2003
• Significant speed improvements to the OpenOffice.org code

Whoa! Here are a few other features that are available in NeoOffice but not available in OpenOffice:

1. Native Mac OS X text highlighting
2. Open Calc or Impress instead of Writer at launch
3. Mobile connectivity and sharing
4. Smoother text kerning
5. Native file locking support for local and networked volumes
6. Mac OS X Services support
7. Media Browser support
8. Native floating tool windows
9. Magnify and swipe trackpad gestures
10. Menus available when no documents are open
11. Import images from scanners and cameras
12. Command-clicking on window titlebar
13. Mac OS X Leopard grammar checking support (Mac OS X 10.5.x and higher only)

Neat. Try it out. So far I like it. I think one major improvement could be their homepage… Common guys!