[X Newbies] Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[marina]

  >1) Running M$ Office 98 in Classic consumes enough system resources
  >(e.g. too much memory or CPU) to significantly slow down your Mac.

I am thinking of 1GB - one of the apps I'd like to start using on OS 
X is iListen, which is particularly CPU intensive.

Would more memory and/or a dual processor help?


  >2) Running M$ Office 98 in Classic is unstable and crashes often enough
  >to be a problem.

Yep, and I suppose the only way to find out is to use it and see what 
happens. Unless there is already a knowledge base I could refer to?


  >3) You receive documents from newer versions of Office that cannot be
  >read by M$ Office 98.

Hadn't thought of this, because I was assuming even new versions of 
Office would have backward compatibility. Wishful thinking?


  >My suggestion (this will take some work) is to list all of your complex
  >formatting requirements. [...]  And the work you've done will give you
  >the hands-on experience you need to determine which app you prefer to
  >use.

You are right, and I appreciate your help in defining a well-laid 
out, scientific methodology.

Thank you Eugene,

marina