ThinkFree Office - 3.5.1052.20

I have a version that's several years old. It's slow, and quite often it won't open a Microsoft Office document, which is why I bought it. I'm willing to assume that the new product is much better than mine, but there's no discernible upgrade pathway from a prior version, and there is absolutely no way to contact anyone at the parent company, by email or telephone, even if you're willing to pay for the privilege. With just a touch of effort by this company, which another $10 added to the purchase price would probably fund, this could probably be twice the product it is.

I've "recommeneded" ThinkFree Office because of its price, and I still may buy it to try out the new version, but it's like ordering something at a post office office box number off a TV add. Their effort to avoid you is obvious.

I bought this app over a year ago when it was slower, nearly microsoft compatible, and cheap.
Three months ago, my copy became corrupted, and I have repeatedly asked the company for a new registration key, but after many emails, they have still not replied.
Looking at the app now, it seems to be a complete rewrite compared to last years offering, and I find it far faster and almost perfectly compatible with MSoffice - and I have both Neo and Open office apps on evaluation.
I have bought apps from one man companies (Tinybooks) and small firms such as Belight in the Ukraine, who reply to a query within an hour, and provide free ongoing updates.
These people don't seem to bother, or is it because they want me to pay them more money because they have rewritten it?
Shame really - I want to give this five stars its so good, but I'm dinged if I'm going to fork out more money.

No matter what method I use to try and set this app to be the default to open .doc files, my iBook reverts to either AppleWorks or Pages. Ideas? Other than being slow to move through documents, no complaints.

It has nothing to do with version 2. It looks like complete rewrite, much more advanced.

Version 2 did not have many features as this one, simplest example is "headers" and "footers"

You would be amazed at the promised compatibility level with MS Word.

The deep but main change is the "Java Virtual Machine" it uses, uses 1.4.x on Mac for now as Apple Java 5 is nothing but stable currently. The previous version was 1.3.x JVM program.

Unless v3 gets rave reviews, I'm considering ThinkFree as dead and buried. I bought version 2 and kept it up to date as patches (rarely) became available. I wanted to like it. After working on very tame documents, nothing else much worked for me. It was a hassle uninstalling and reinstalling to get it to maybe work once or twice before needing to do it again. I was hopeful, but in the end it was a waste of time and money.