Microsoft word has fast become one of the most widely used word processing applications over both Windows and Mac. I remember when not only MS Word was avaliable, but also great word processors such as Word Perfect and Lotus Word Pro. so what's happened to the rest? I went to find out.

Other great word processors are still around but get overshadowed by the grunt of Microsoft Word and the whole Microsoft Office suite. Don't get me wrong the MS Office suite is a great set of applications and I use word and Excel all the time, but wouldn't it be great to have the same functionality of Microsoft Word in an application that's say.....free?

OpenOffice
- Great set of features
- Compatible with MS Office file formats
- Free

Well friends, we can. I'm going to start off with a great open source office suite called OpenOffice. Linux users have been aware of OpenOffice for quite sometime as its the default productivity package installed with practically every linux distribution, but now the folks at OpenOffice have finally written the application for Windows. OpenOffice not only includes a premier word processor (Write) it also contains practically everything you need to make the complete switch from MS Office to OpenOffice. These features include a spreasheet, presentation app (powerpoint), project management application etc. For a free download, you can't go past OpenOffice.
Even though it is free, that doesn't mean that its Word's sub par equivalent, no sir. OpenOffice has the same functionality as word and even more so, and for free you can't go wrong.


Corel Word Perfect
- Very powerful application
- Fairly easy to use
- Not free, USD$159.99 for WP Office X3

Word perfect has been around for quite sometime and in the mid 90's (i think) Word Perfect was bought by Corel who are most well known for their imaging and graphics applications namely Corel Draw. Word Perfect is a great MS Word alternative but unfortunately is not free and at a hefty USD$159.99 for the Word Perfect Office Suite its probably not much cheaper than Microsoft's product. A substantial application nonetheless.


AbiWord
- Free Application
- Cross Platform over Windows, Mac and Linux
- Useful features

AbiWord is an open source project licenced under the GPL which means free, free, free. The team working on this word processor have done a remarkable job at implementing some of the features into their program that made Word such a popular tool. The interface is fairly streamlined and easy to find what your looking for (very OpenOffice'ish) and would be a great MS Word replacement for no cost at all.

LyX
- Free Open Source Application
- Nice features
- Different

LyX is another open source free word processor avaliable for the Windows and Mac platforms and is interestingly different from other word processors out there. Sure, LyX still looks like any other word processor but the focus behind Lyx is behind the structure of your document and not the appearance itself. A quote taken straight from the LyX website sums up the application great: "LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, 'finger painting' font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries. You just write. In the background, Prof. Knuth's legendary TeX typesetting engine makes you look good".

Updates are readily avaliable and are released at regular intervals and support is also great. The customizable interface is also a bonus aswell.

There are heaps of other alternatives to Word out there but there are just so many to list so I'll post links to a few others below and let you make up your own mind about them.

OpenOffice
AbiWord
ThinkFree
Writely - Online word processor
Lyx - Free opensource word processor - Windows / Mac
Atlantis
Kword - Linux
Appleworks - Commercial Software MacOSX
TextShield

Anybody stuck using Microsoft Word and wants a change should definately check out some of these free open source alternatives to using Microsoft Word. Microsoft WNextord is a great program, but if you want a change, there's always an answer.