I suspect the files stay in place but you can't read or use them unless you get Open Office or the MS Office beta.
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awesome. thanks.
You can still read them (even without installing anything else). WordPad opens .doc files, though if you make changes, you'll have to save as .rtf files, as WordPad doesn't save in the .doc format.
OpenOffice is pretty good these days. It's what I use at home.
www.openoffice.org
Really slow and bloaty though - it takes a lot to be more bloatware than MS Office, but open office manages it.
It does work very well ; I think the word processor handles graphics and modest desktop editing better than word. I will not compose in it, but I use OpenOffice for its extensive translation capabilities, and at times for final edits and final layout.
I use OpenOffice cause I can't afford MS Office. It works, but I get frustrated with it more than with Word. Probably cause I'm more used to the shortcuts in Word and they don't always work in OpenOffice.
It works pretty well for me, but I didn't like it until version 2.0. I'd recommend having Java 1.5 installed first (maybe this is only an issue with Linux though and the craptasic faux java that is installed by default in many versions of Linux). However, this is on Linux not on Windows.
Abiword is another option for word processing that is lighter weight. The interface might look a little funky on Windows though.
Really slow and bloaty though - it takes a lot to be more bloatware than MS Office, but open office manages it.
Heh. The version I'm running (the most recent) doesn't. That's one of the reasons I run it, frankly. It's much faster and less prone to eating my resources, and as I'm only using it for WP, it gives me all I need.
Interesting. I have the latest too, and it is much slower than Word 97. I wonder what I'm doing wrong with open office.
Interesting. I have the latest too, and it is much slower than Word 97. I wonder what I'm doing wrong with open office.
AH!
See, I haven't used Word 97 in... a really long time. So I'm comparing it to later versions of Word.