InTouch Magazine Articles Archive

Issue 21, August 2008

Computers for Absolute Novices - 15

By Adam Gardiner.

Very Good News for Beginners As I write this month’s (August 2008) article on a new, free, professional quality word processing program called ‘OpenOffice.org _Writer’ it struck me that here was my topic for this month. I know that most of us when we beg, borrow or even buy our first computer can barely afford to pay Mr Gates for the full blown ‘MicroSoft Office suite which is the global standard ‘Office’ software.

Ideally this can be used to replace the usual cut down version called ‘Works’ which is bundled (i.e. pre-loaded) with most commonly available computers and upon which many cut their computing teeth. Now, ‘Works’ is perfectly adequate to use for our hazy early days of one finger typing and, to be fair, once we learn how we can save our work in ‘Generic’ file formats like .rtf or .txt our efforts can be read by all other computer users and converted with permission into their ‘native’ file formats for research, publication or other legitimate uses. If you don’t wish your work to be copied and used by others then there are special programs (Adobe PDF suite for example) which can save your work securely and still be shared. Although this is not a free download I think that you will find the cost acceptable if you are going to do serious work. However the Adobe Acrobat Reader program is free to download via the internet at www.adobe.com/downloads/.

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