From Closet Con

[lexin]

As I write this I'm at Closet Con. I've generally been attending the panels and things because why am I here otherwise, but I've skipped out on one about the science of Star Trek and am considering actually reading a zine. As you can tell, I'm also testing the pretty netbook, which so far is working well. I just hope it works as well when I get to Wales.

It doesn't have a proper word processing program, just WordPad, and if WordPad has a spelling checker it's not immediately obvious to me. Which is odd as it has so many other things.
So far, there's no more news of the Aged P., I'm assuming that silence is good news on that quarter.

Comments

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

You can install Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) if you need word processing. 'Tis free, and very good. I've been using it exclusively for about eight years, as has most of my family.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Does it run under Windows 7, or is there a version which does? When I looked at it, it didn't seem to.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Yes, just go here (http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#tested-full) and select your language preference in the Windows column (which I assume is British English (http://download.services.openoffice.org/files/localized/en-GB/3.2.1/OOo_3.2.1_Win_x86_install-wJRE_en-GB.exe)).

[lexin.livejournal.com]

That is so cool! Thanks!

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

No worries. :) Your quick tutorial is, by default it saves as the Open Document format (.odt for word processing docs), but you can tell it to save as a Windows format or export it as a PDF file if you want to share it with someone else. If you're doing insanely fancy shit, there might be subtle differences between the .odt and the .doc, which it will warn you about any time you try to save out of the native format, but I haven't seen that happen for over six years, and I've converted some crazy spreadsheets. Beyond that, it's going to be pretty much like a generic office suite.

(It also has the benefit of being able to open MS Office 2007 docs as well as docs from older versions of MS Office, which, bizarrely, Microsoft Office won't do; you get one or the other, and pay for a converter.)