MS Works 7; is it all I need?

[Binoculars]

Just taken delivery of new lappy and up for the exciting task of installing everything needed. My trusty copy of Office 97 has always provided me with more than I need in terms of word processing, and I have only the most basic requirements for spreadsheets and even less for databases. I just assumed I would install Office97.

A brief look at the pre-installed MS Works 7 leads me to think that the generic word processor at least is now probably every bit as good as the full MS Word from seven years ago. Any opinions on this?

I repeat that my requirements are not high; Binoettes with school assignments probably have higher expectations than me. Is there anything significant missing from Works 7 that is likely to concern me at any stage?

[amanoffewwords]

Works...in a word (no pun intended) is :yuk: (one of the few things I don't like about Dell, they'd be better off saving the hard-disk space and charging less).

Actually, it's ok if you just want to do the basics, and you can save it in RTF format to make it compatible with Word etc.

Having said that I have seen Works make mince-meat of non-Works created documents, especially word-perfect.

If you need Word-type docs on a regular basis (and Excel, Powerpoint etc) I'd suggest downloading
Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org) - it does most of what Microsoft Office pro does, but for zero AUD/USD/GBP/EUR etc.

My two cents anyway,

Charles

[Tuba Mirum]

One thing Works doesn't seem to provide is automatic backup. TM Jr. mark 2, who wants to be a writer, lost several thousand words of his latest opus when a Works document became corrupt; no recovery was possible, whereas my experience with Word suggests to me that under similar circumstances a Word (with appropriate settings) document would have been recoverable.

OpenOffice seems to have automatic backup capabilities, much like Word. It seems a bit slow starting up - this may be related to its being written in an interpreted language (Python) - but once running, works fine on my Dell Inspiron 1150.