Writing Software

[Steve Roberts]

I'm in the process of buying a new laptop.
Reading the on-line comments of recent buyers of various laptops I see a consistent complaint about Vista software. Do you have Vista and is it
workable for a writer?

Steve

[Author101]

Hi Steve,
I don't have Vista, I have an hp and use Windows and Office with it to write and basically do everything. I still like hp and I still like Microsoft Office. I've heard complaints about Vista as well.
Good luck!
Carol

[Donald James Parker]

Vista presents a number of issues. In my opinion, Microsoft made a big blunder in forcing this new operating system upon us. The laptop I bought can't even run another OS. I'm sure they'll work out the kinks sometime in the future - though when is the big question. It probably is not a major concern for a writer, however so you probably will be just fine with it, but if you got Windows XP instead, you'll know what you're getting.

[Steve Roberts]

Mr Parker,
I'm suffering through Vista with my new laptop. Part of the issue is that everything is in a different place and works slightly different than the XP system. After a month of low productivity with vista I'm moving in on being productive again. It took me several hours on several days talking to people in India and elsewhere, having them take over my screen three times, to get it right. I also had to uninstall and reinstall aol 9.1.
When you upgrade in technology you expect to get an improvement in your PC's capability. That is not the case with Vista, at least not without conciderable time and effort.

[Linton Robinson]

Two words on Vista: It sucks. I ended up taking it off my new computer and paying for an XP disk to install. This is very common, Vista is probably the most "un-installed" software in history.

It was a huge mistake that even Microsoft has sort of tacitly recognized.

If I were you, I would ditch it.

[Robert Medak]

I have Vista and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, which contains Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and OneNote 2007. I am currently writing a book using Word 2007; and am having no issues. The main issue with Vista is memory. Do not settle for less than 2 Gigs of memory. Two Gigs is the minimum that a computer should have to run Vista effectively. You might have to download some drivers for things like printers to work if you are upgrading to Vista for the first time, I contacted Hewlett-Packard and got the right driver for my printer and everything worked great.

Word 2007 has its own format for saving documents, but if you make the default saving format Word 97-2003 there will be no problem with anyone being able to open your documents.