WMV and office on a Mac?

[Alan Wardroper]

Couple of microsoft/mac-related questions for ya...
1. Best way to deal with wmv files (besides just deleting them)?
-in-laws get emails from friends with stupid viral videos in wmv format. They want to watch them. I've sent him off to install vlc. Do I need to do anything to get it to auto open wmvs in vlc once it's installed? Will QT Pro do it too? Any (bad?) experience with the mac version of ms media player?

2. What are you folks using for an office suite? He had an old version of ms office for the old PPC Mac. Should we bother with ms office for the new intel mac? Any alternatives? I put Open Office on there and it didn't work for him...slow to start up, it crashed once too and he's afraid of it now.

Thanks 

[Col]

Couple of microsoft/mac-related questions for ya...
1. Best way to deal with wmv files (besides just deleting them)?
-in-laws get emails from friends with stupid viral videos in wmv format. They want to watch them. I've sent him off to install vlc. Do I need to do anything to get it to auto open wmvs in vlc once it's installed? Will QT Pro do it too? Any (bad?) experience with the mac version of ms media player?

The Mac Windows Media Player is hopelessly out-of-date, but you can play WMV videos in QuickTime by using Flip4Mac, the free version of which is available from Microsoft under the name of Windows media Components for QuickTime

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

As you say, you can always Get Info on a WMV file and set VLC to play it and all others of that type.

http://www.videolan.org

QuickTime Pro gives you the ability to save video to disk and some other options. Without Flip4Mac it will not help your play WMV files


2. What are you folks using for an office suite? He had an old version of ms office for the old PPC Mac. Should we bother with ms office for the new intel mac? Any alternatives? I put Open Office on there and it didn't work for him...slow to start up, it crashed once too and he's afraid of it now.

NeoOffice works pretty well for me.  It's stable on my PowerMac G4s, the
G5, and the Intel MacBook Pro. I still use MS Office but am finding it harder to justify the expense.

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

HTH Colin

[Alan Wardroper]

Thanks Colin. A goldmine of information as always.
I need to buy another mac ...

[Alan Wardroper]

Quick follow up on that wmv thing. I installed the freebie flip4mac and streaming WMVs will now play in Safari but not in firefox...any ideas? I don't see a way to add a handler in firefox. Any way to get it to register in firefox?

[Col]

Quick follow up on that wmv thing. I installed the freebie flip4mac and streaming WMVs will now play in Safari but not in firefox...any ideas? I don't see a way to add a handler in firefox. Any way to get it to register in firefox?

Mine works fine in FireFox and I didn't have to do anything special.

It is possible that just updating Flip4Mac to the latest version (check in System Preferences, Flip4Mac) which is 2.2.1.11 and came out about 6 weeks ago might bring FireFox on board.

If that fails, you go into FireFox Preferences, Applications, scroll to the bottom of the list and select Flip4Mac under WMV, WMA, etc. as shown in the attached screen shot.

Colin

[Alan Wardroper]

Thanks Colin. I didn't see those application types for wmv etc. in there and don't see any way to add them either. I'll maybe try a new profile and see if that helps.