[X Newbies] Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[marina]

  >Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien -- one of the basic rules of computing.

Thanks - I'd never heard of this one... but doesn't it defeat the 
purpose of improving computing itself, don't you think? :-)


  >The tyranny of majority. Believe it or not, most users find such
  >features useful and time-saving. Those of us that don't must master the
  >programme and disable many of its built-in features. That's always the
  >first thing I do, and I've never had the experience you describe. It's
  >the price you pay for being a minority. As a Mac user, you should be
  >used to it by now...
  >

Actually, I have found that disabling the automatic preferences does 
not guarantee that Word will let me control its behaviour the way *I* 
like (swapping styles, or creating new styles I have not defined is a 
classic - no matter whether the "Automatically update styles" 
checkboxes are checked or not). This, I personally find very 
un-professional for a professional word processor, no matter how many 
or how little people use its "advanced" features.

And even if I chose to "pay a price" for being a minority, I don't 
see why I should accept it passively... :-)
(if that was the case, we'd all still be sure that the Sun goes 
around the Earth... among others ;-)

Cheers,

marina