I do know why I didn’t use AbiWord earlier, sometimes I can be a stick in the mud. AbiWord is a light and fast open source word processing program. AbiWord does word processing and word processing only which allows it to run faster with fewer hiccups than Neo Office or Open Office (I’m a die hard user of both). Neo Office and Open Office also do word processing but they take a long time to launch because of all of the other programs included in the Neo Office suite. I have been slow to switch to AbiWord because I didn’t want to install a program that couldn’t also create spreadsheets or presentations.

This weekend I was convinced to give AbiWord another try. The convincing argument was, “you don’t need to have a presentation tool installed because the best presentation tools are online.” The argument made sense when I considered that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used Neo Office Presentation or Key Note in the last year and I make a lot of presentations. All Neo Office is doing if I install Abiword is taking up space and speed. So tonight I’m taking the plunge and uninstalling Neo Office on one of my laptops. AbiWord, here I come!

Here’s a short list of AbiWord’s features.
1. works on Mac, PC, and Linux.
2. has all of the reading capabilities of Open Office/ Neo Office.
3. layout and formatting options are very similar to MS and Open Office.
4. plug-in options allow for use on older machines.

Applications for Education
AbiWord, like all open source software, saves schools money. Districts do not have to pay licensing fees to use AbiWord. For those of you unaware of how much licensing fees cost consider this, some school districts do not pay their new teachers as much as they pay Microsoft in licensing fees.