The Savvy Technologist

Big word processor in a small package

There’s nothing glamorous about a word processor, but it’s an indispensible tool. Although nearly every computer sold today has at least a rudimentary word processor, compatibility with Microsoft Word, the de facto standard, is hit and miss. Since the days of handwritten assignments are waning fast, students need a cheap and Word-compatible word processor.

AbiWord to the rescue. Version 2.2 of AbiWord was released earlier this month and now has a native OS X version to accompany the Linux and Windows versions that have been around since the early days. Lots of people know about OpenOffice.org, but AbiWord has some advantages. They’re both free and open source, but AbiWord is a much leaner application that will run well on an older machine. I’ve used OpenOffice.org on Linux and Windows in the past, and it’s a great set of applications. Unfortunately, the lack of a native OS X version of OpenOffice.org makes it a non-starter on my PowerBook.

With AbiWord’s ability to read and write all of the major word processing formats including Word and WordPerfect, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep a copy around just for file conversion purposes.

Tags: Open source