Some Help for Disgruntled Word 2007 Users

Posted by Tom Colvin

June 11, 2008

I’ve just come across a blog that’s new to me: Jonathan’s Tool Bar and Grill. It is a very down-to-earth column about small tricks and tools that make computing a bit easier. I like it.

What prompts me to write about it here is the recent post about Word 2007. I’ve heard really bothersome things about this version of Word. It turns out that there are some “fixes” that retrieve many of the conveniences of Word 2003, while maintaining the new tricks of Word 2007. Some of you may find this post really useful. [Others may also wish to follow this fine, informative blog. Jonathan publishes a new post every Sunday.]

AND LINUX TOO?

Another element of this fine blog are the almost weekly posts by Mark Lautman about the Linux operating system.

Frankly, I don’t know very much about Linux, other than it’s free and very stable, a strong alternative to Microsoft Windows. I’ve often thought that I should explore Linux, but have always turned away, assuming that there just wasn’t that much software out there for writers that runs on Linux

Mark’s posts put that fallacy to rest. There’s plenty out there, I’ve discovered, after looking back over Mark’s past 6 months of posts.

I’ll be taking another look at Linux. I’m motivated because of a new mini-portable computer by Asus, which costs only $300. One of the reasons for the low cost: it runs on Linux.

Before plunking down money for that laptop, though, I’ll test drive the operating system first. I discovered via Mark’s column that it’s easy to do — just set up a parallel Linux system, right on my Windows laptop. He introduces a recently rleleased software package that makes it very simple to do — in 10 minutes, you’re up and running. I’ll try it out later this year, when I finally have more time.

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