*See Below for Update from 11/25/08.

FWIW, I recommend avoiding the use of Open Office and Abi Word in OS X, it has positively introduced chaos onto my system.

After exporting a file to PDF, look what happened to a normal web page:

Don't use Open Office in OS X yet

AbiWord and OpenOffice both also exhibit glitchy text editing, the cursor is unpredictable and they often interpret double spaces with no explanation. Totally unacceptable for the needs of the Abstract Exponent.

These are, of course, open source volunteer software efforts, but they are just not ready.

So, for now, I’m switching to pages for my mac tech needs.

*Update: Open Office just released version 3 for Intel processors and I am happy to inform that it works just fine. The Beta ran in the translation program Rosetta and therefore had a major performance tax, as well as a few bugs.