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10 October 2007

Ask MeCha: Which Word Processor? [More:]A woman at work who is really not at all technologically minded is buying a laptop from Dell.

She asked my advice and we've chosen a spec that gives her lots of power and ram, and also Windows XP instead of Vista (which you can opt for with Dell UK). We use XP at work and this woman needs to have an OS she's familiar with, it'd confuse her to switch from one to the other.

Now, Dell tried to sell her MS Office 2007, which we don't use at work and which I understand is quite a different animal from Office 2003 (our system at work). I, and the guy sitting next to her, persuaded her that no, she really doesn't need it. She only wants word processing, not spreadsheets or powerpoint or anything else beyond being able to type letters, so paying £150 for MS Office 2007 is unnecessary.

At home I use Abiword, which I've hacked so it defaults to save as .doc, and so that it starts each new document in our office default font.

But I know Pam would be confused with Abiword, simple though it is, because its interface is slightly different from Word.

So I'm looking at OpenOffice as an option for her, because Writer is very similar to Word in how it looks.

I said I'll download a word processor onto CD for her so she can install it (in fact, I'll probably have to install it for her).

Can I download just Writer, or do I have to download the entire OpenOffice suite?

Or does anyone know of another standalone word processor that looks just like Word and will save in .doc?
Does she format documents much? I would go with Word or WordPad, as the formatting in OpenOffice doesn't always translate well to Word, and vice versa... this is based on uing OpenOffice some years ago, though, so I could be wrong.
posted by By the Grace of God 10 October | 03:36
BtGog, Word is only available as part of Microsoft Office. WordPad cannot save in .doc format.

She won't need to format much, just paragraphs, justified, in Ariel 11 pt font, that she can email into the office.

She needs something that looks as much like Word as possible, but without the big expense of Word.
posted by essexjan 10 October | 03:58
Can you buy standalone Word from Dell?

Alternatively, Microsoft Works (£30)
allows you to read and edit Word documents and do word-processing etc. Dell often bundle Works for free. I don't think it lets you save as .doc though.

I tried OpenOffice a while ago and, being used to Word, found it frustrating. It took ages to start up, and various features I use either weren't there or were more of a hassle. It's saving and opening of .doc's was imperfect. But with the new open-standard .docx format for Word 07, maybe OpenOffice will get better? Ultimately, the reason Microsoft can get away with charging high prices for Word and Office is that for they're the best option for most people most of the time, particularly when working in teams.
posted by matthewr 10 October | 05:49
I'm afraid that it's either Word or something that doesn't behave in exactly the same way as word.

AbiWord - Good, but doesn't look like word and bad conversion to/from word docs.
Open Office. - Looks like word, high interoperability with word but it's super slow.
Google Documents - Online only. Easy to use, but lacks many features & doesn't look like word.

I'm afraid that after years of looking for a good word processor, I've had to return to Word. It really is the best.

I believe though that you can still buy Word 2003, so maybe look around for that.
posted by seanyboy 10 October | 06:08
Presumably your office will be moving to Office 2007 sooner or later, even if they don't currently plan to, so maybe you can persuade her that getting used to it at home will put her ahead of the pack for when the office moves to it.
posted by matthewr 10 October | 06:18
Here is an add-in pack that will make Office 2007 look like Office 2003.

Your mileage may vary.

I like openoffice. You can install writer without installing everything, I think.
posted by disclaimer 10 October | 06:28
I think I'll go with OpenOffice for her. If I have to install the entire package, I'll delete any icons for spreadsheets, email and everything else apart from Writer. Do not underestimate the lack of techie know-how of the woman I'm doing this for. Any extra icons will confuse her. If it looks and acts (much) like Word I think it'll be fine for Pam.

Office 2007 is a very expensive piece of kit to buy if all you need is a word processor to type very simple documents (text only, no tables, columns, images or anything more than straightforward paragraphs).

We won't be switching to Office 2007 for a very long time.
posted by essexjan 10 October | 07:36
Who knew you could buy Open Office so cheap on eBay...
I'm not sure what i think about that.
posted by seanyboy 10 October | 07:46
If you trust the Marketplace sellers on Amazon UK, they have Microsoft Word 2003 for £39.99.
posted by chrismear 10 October | 08:50
I like open office; I've had absolutely no difficulty moving documents between it an MS Word. I don't find it slow, although I found the auto-complete feature awful and it took forever to figure out how to turn it off. You needn't install any other components.

(I ended up switching to open office after Dell refused to replace my software--purchased from Dell and supplied without CDs or backups of any kind other than a purchase number--after Dell's harddrive failed. When it's time for a new machine, no Dell for me!)
posted by crush-onastick 10 October | 09:47
chrismear!!!! You're on the internets.
posted by seanyboy 10 October | 10:42
I'm afraid that after years of looking for a good word processor, I've had to return to Word.
Yeah, much as I hate to do it, I keep coming back because it's simply easier than changing and dealing with all the issues when you share files.

I also have an Office 2003 CD that installs the whole package (or any component), including Project, Visio, etc etc etc with serial numbers pre-entered and none of that inconvenient paying money stuff that my ex-boss bought in Bangkok for like $5, which makes it even harder - if I get to the point where I have to buy a word processor, I won't - I'll go to OpenOffice for sure. Jan, I'll have a look tonight and see if it possible to separate out Word - maybe I can lend you the files in some way for evaluation purposes.
posted by dg 10 October | 17:34
Eyeball yarn || Okay, now I'm laughing.

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