What are the advantages of MS word?
Well, the main advantage of Microsoft Word is 100% compatibility with Microsoft Word… at least for the same version (2003 with 2003, 2007 with 2007, etc.). For most people, that’s about it. Really, though, OpenOffice would suit most people’s word processing needs, and it is 99% compatible with Word. For a small handful of power users, there are some Microsoft Word-only features that OpenOffice doesn’t have. But if you don’t know what those are, then you’re better off with OpenOffice or another free alternative… unless you just have cash to burn.
As opposed to what exactly? On my old PC I didn’t have Microsoft Word, and was stuck with Wordpad. It had no spell check and when I did work for classes and e-mailed it to myself I had to reformat the page so that it would print correctly. Now, when I bought my laptop I chose to have Microsoft Word installed on it. It’s formatted correctly, far more user friendly than Wordpad. Spellcheck, Word count… but that depends on what you want to use it for. I write so it comes in very handy for me. I know this is slightly unrelated, but if you don’t want to pay for Microsoft Word you can always get a google account and use google docs. It’s almost, basically, word, but with less features.
