If you used a computer for any form of word processing you most likely used Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word came to be in 1983 and has dominated the business of word processing for countless years. The only real competitor it had was Corel's Word Perfect which was a worthy opponent up until the Nineties when Microsoft was able to pull ahead in the race. Today Microsoft Word is part of Microsoft's Office suite and is pre-installed on many Windows machines and the standard for most businesses. However, it does not have to be that way. There are many freeware options available for the consumer willing to break away from the sheep.
The most popular two are Google Docs and Oracle's Open Office. While relatively new, Google Docs has improved greatly since its launch and is becoming more and more integrated with Google's suite of web apps. Recently with the launch of the Google Chrome web store it is now even possible to view and edit your Google Docs documents offline. Google Docs may be the up and coming software suite but I personally prefer Open Office.
Open Office is a very stable program that is compatible with many file formats including Microsoft's own .doc format (Google Docs is also compatible with Word documents). Another thing that is really neat about Open Office is that it offers an alternative program to take the place of all the programs included in Microsoft Office. Its spreadsheets program takes the place of Excel and its presentation program takes the place of Power Point. The one important thing to remember when using Open Office is to save your files in a format that is compatible with the programs your friends and colleagues use. Generally these are from Microsoft's Office suite but Open Office allows you to save all of your documents or projects in such a way that they will be compatible. Occasionally you will come across a formatting error here and there but since Open Office is offered for free can you really argue. Plus Open Office runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
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