I have listed the best and top ten word processing tools available for free!
Pathetic Writer (PW)
http://siag.nu/pw/
An X-based word processor for UNIX. It supports various formats like M$ word, PW (it's native format), rtf, etc...
Maxwell
Motif-based word processor. Maxwell is a good WYSIWYG word processor available at zero cost. It requires the Motif library to run. (now, this is also available at no charge)
TeX
http://www.latex-project.org/
http://www.tug.org/
Basically a typesetting system based on LaTeX, considered by many to be the best tool to typeset complex mathematical formulae. It is very popular in the mathematics and physics communities.
IBM Lotus Symphony (Documents)
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa
Its website claims it as a "Versatile text editor or word processor" It claims that it supports .doc/.odt/.sxw/.lwp/.rtf/.txt formats. It can run on both windows and linux. Since it is from a big name company, it is definitely worth a try!!
ThinkFree
http://www.thinkfree.com/
Basically an office suite written in Java that runs on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh platforms. ThinkFree Online is a web-based version of it's office suite.
The major pros about it are:
- has a look and feel similar to Microsoft Word allowing users to switch over easily.
- has both desktop and web version of its office suites.
- can read and write to M$ word file formats.
Zoho (Writer)
http://writer.zoho.com/
A web office suite. Since it is web-based, Zoho writer is OS independent.
It can work platform which supports Mozilla firefox browser.
Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
An open source word processing program which can run on almost any platform. You can quickly open any M$ word documents and edit it, though it is some what reluctant to crash anytime (when editing some complex M$ word files)
Google Docs (Standard Edition)
http://docs.google.com/
I think it another free web based word processor. Though you can hardly compare it to any of the desktop word processors, its main strength is that it is a web application. You just need a good and free browser like firefox to run this! It allows you to open/edit/save the documents online. No installation/upgrades/etc...
Open Office (Writer)
http://www.openoffice.org/
It has everything you would expect from a modern, fully equipped word processor! Above all, it is multi-platform and very easy to use! Supports various formats and comes with a full office suite. It has all the required strength to rip off M$ word's monopoly. Now this gets our first prize!!!!!!!!
So can you see that there are so many options available for M$ word and its office suite. Small business should seriously evaluate these, before spending thousands of dollars on any of the commercial word processor!
Enjoy!! the free world ;)
