Abiword is a lightweight, lovely, simple Word Processor that does everything I need. My most recent post on RandomRandy.com was my first post using Abiword. I typed it up, saved my document (I autosave to a dropbox drive because that’s just as effective as saving to the cloud via an online word processing app - so in case my power goes out and I need to restore my data), and then simply copy and paste the entire article right into my blogger account. All of the formatting was preserved and I ended up with a RandomRandy.com post analogous to the one on my hard drive. “Yay” for simplicity.
Unless you have some super multi-core computer with a bazillion GiGs of RAM, your computer may noticeably require some processing power to open up a full-featured Word Processing application such as Word, LibreOffice Writer, or OpenOffice.org Writer. Expect to use over 100MB when installing any Office Suite in general. I’ll cut to the chase and say that Abiword is about 8mb to install - ridiculously awesome! This is a full-featured word processor that runs on multiple platforms, it supports plugins, things like Mail Merge, and much more.
Abiword does not only run on a couple of platforms, it runs on a bunch of them! The good thing about being able to install this tiny, full-featured gem on all of your platforms is that, when combining the total amount of disk space you’ve used up among all of your computers, it probably will not even come close to the amount of disk space one would use up installing a single copy of any office suite on any computer. The last time I checked, hard drive prices were going up - like 150% up!
Have I convinced you yet to at least try it? If so, I’ll recommend a little trick that I have used over the last couple of years to integrate the reliability of cloud computing with my local hard drive. What you can do is set up a free Dropbox account, download it for your platform, and install. Now just remember to save your Word Processing documents to a Dropbox folder on your computer and you’ll have the reliability of the cloud + your local hard drive in case, say, the power goes out when you’re typing, or if you would like to easily access your document from multiple computers without having to remember to email yourself an attachment every time.
I hope that I have at least given you some ideas to make your Word Processing tasks more efficient.
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