Difference between "oem" program and regular??

Am looking for an inexpensive standard Midrosoft Office for Mac - am coming across "oem" programs. What does that mean and what problems may lurk in getting this type? Thanks in advance.

...but I don't think Office was ever included on any Macs as a standard option.

If you're running Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, you can install the free "NeoOffice", which is an open source Office-compatible suit of programs. It is meant to be able to replace Office, and be compatible with almost all of it's file formats.
http://www.neooffice.org/

There's also another free Office compatible suite called 'OpenOffice', but you need to install X11 in order to use it (which is easy and included on your OSX install disks, but won't run without it).

There was a trial of Office on my Mac, but I suspect that doesn't count.

Too chicken to try at this point. will check out the other options you mentioned.

I think it works for about a month or so after the first time you run it.

NeoOffice isn't bad, really.

Thanks for the tip

offers pre-installed Office for something like $200.

The drawback is that you can't reinstall the disks on another machine.

I hate office. It's buggy, still prone to macros viri, and slow and sluggish and bloated and just a plain waste of a few hundred bucks and a couple of gig. If you've got that much to throw around, look at iWork (which will give you a far superior word processing program and a presentation program) and Mariner Calc or neo office for the spreadsheet. Excel is not worth the $400 for office, and word is a piece of crap. Outlook is a security flaw on a CD and powerpoint irritates everyone.

Mail and Eudora are better mail programs, iCal is a far better calendar, Pages is a thousand times the superior writer's tool (and I have used them all.. from textedit to the newest version of office) and Calc and neo office integrate better with filemaker and other database programs for mac than excel does. (Excel likes Access, which is not available for mac.)

iWork runs 79 and Mariner calc runs 69. Neo office is free.

but the main reason I am looking elswhere is because I do a lot of work to be emailed to people with non-macs. Most of these people use office and while I can "translate" their work, they have trouble with mine no matter what format I "save as" or "export" out of Appleworks, Pages and the like, always checking "send windows compatible attachments" in my safari mail program.

Many times, the only thing they can get is the plain text version , losing all formatting. - it is a pain and am trying to solve it at minimal cost.

I appreciate the advice.

That's the compatibility format.

that didn't work -- but the neo office did in that format.

OEM software is only supposed to be sold with -- and installed on -- a new computer. Some small resellers will sell it to you if you buy anything from them (blank CDs, for instance).

That being said, there are alternatives to MS Office, as stated above.

Good luck! (EDIT: removed redundant link to OpenOffice)