----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Penlington" <[log in to unmask]>


> Carol wrote:
>
>>I followed the advice of many here and downloaded Open Office..>>
>
>
> Using Open Office just to read word documents is rather like taking a
> sledgehammer to crack a very small peanut.
>
unfortunately I must disagree. Word documents can get very complicated
and small couldn't handle them. But WordPad files are much simpler.


> I assume you have dialup, so it's highly likely that such a long download
> will be corrupted, or miss some vital bit.
>

She said that she has DSL - I think it is ADSL. Download time is somewhat
long but it is possible that she has low cost 128kb/s download packet like
available here.


> For years I've used the free Atlantis Nova as an alternative simple word
> processor to read .doc documents.
> http://atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/html/download/nova.htm
>
> It's only a 760Kb download and it does most things you might need a word
> processor for. Try it as a Word viewer/editor.
>
I tried Atlantis Nova. I had too many problems but that was years ago and it
could be better now. Also there is TextMaker - not free per se but there is
free beta version and what I have read  it is not bad.
http://www.softmaker.com/english/tmw05_en.htm

>
> The industry heavyweights such as Word and OpenOffice are great for
> commercial office environments. But for most of us, unless you are creating
> newsletters or are a professional journalist, they are total
> overkill.  Word is fine, I guess, if you have worked in an office and are
> fully familiar with it, but otherwise it's unlikely that most of us would
> ever use more than 1/10th of its functions.
>

I think that 1/10th would be exaggeration. Big part of  documents made
in Word could be done in Notepad or WordPad. Plain text with some
formatting. Taking account that I work in University and process number
of scientific text with complicated graphics.


Toomas

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