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?