For many years, I’ve harbored a little secret. Along with the current version of Microsoft Word, on every computer I’ve had except this one I’ve installed Word version 6 as well. I’ve wanted to have access to a small, fast word processor that wasn’t subject to macro viruses. Older versions of Word were nowhere near as large and feature-laden as they are now. With Word 6, I could just write without wading through Word’s endless bloat.
However, when I moved to my current XP computer, I told myself, I have GOT to get away from using 10-year old software. It’s getting a little ridiculous and older software almost invariably ends up having (or causing) problems.
However, thanks to a great tip from a reader, I now have an alternative. AbiWord is a free, open source (GNU General Public License) word processor for Windows that is available at http://www.abisource.com. It is compatible with MS Word because it can easily save RTF files. Word opens RTF files without any problem. (In fact, sometimes Word users must save a file as RTF to share it with other people using a different version of Word!)
AbiWord is small. My installation is less then 10MB, compared to about 300MB for Microsoft Office. It’s also extremely fast. It opens in a blink of an eye, rather than the ponderous wait you experience as Word loads up. It has long-time Word features I like, such as AutoText, styles, and templates. I also was happy to discover, it even has "word count" which, as a writer, I use all the time.
To me, AbiWord is like a hybrid between Word and WordPad. If you need a word processor with a little more formatting power than WordPad, but don’t want all the bells and whistles found in Word or Word Perfect, it’s a great option. And you can’t beat the price.