[Windows Only] I don’t have anything against Microsoft Word, except the price. Most businesses will pay the big money that MS wants, but a home user will usually use whatever is already installed on their PC. That does not have to be true. There are several free Word alternatives that will happily do the same job. I found one free replacement that looks great and will even run quickly on older PCs. It’s called DeVicky Word.

DeVicky Word not only does many of the things that MS Word does, it has a few unique features that make it worth downloading.

Here’s a list of some of the features:

* Bullets and Numbered Lists – completely customizable
* Character and Paragraph Formatting – full WYSIWYG
* Document Sections – add as many sections as you need
* Headers and Footers
* Hypertext Links – inside and outside links
* Multi-Level Undo / Redo
* Page and Document Settings
* Page Columns – any number of columns
* Printing – what you see is what you get
* Search and Replace
* Spell Checking
* Tables – add tables within tables if needed
* Text Frames – add boxes of text anywhere
* Doc Reader – listen to you docs

Supported File Formats

* Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Export
* Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Import
* Adobe Portable Document Format Archive (PDF/A) Export
* Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
* Image Formats – TIFF, WMF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, GIF
* Microsoft Office Open XML (DOCX)
* Microsoft Word (DOC)
* Rich Text Format (RTF)

Download DeVicky Word:
http://www.devvicky.com/products.php

Techie Buzz Verdict:

After using it for a short while, I decided that I liked DeVicky better than the Word alternatives I’ve tried in the past. It seems more responsive and launches much quicker than the other full featured apps.  It also has very good built in help files.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5 (Excellent)

It seems that every few months, a new web-based office suite is born. Since I spend a good deal of my time writing, having a reliable word processor is paramount. Over time, I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated with the size, cost, and inexplicable changes to Microsoft Office. Combined with the failure of Windows Vista, the massive changes to Office 2007 has caused a lot of people to reconsider spending so much on future Microsoft Office releases.

In the past 3-4 years, a lot of companies have introduced web-based office suites to compete directly with Microsoft’s offerings. A little over a year ago, I was just learning my way around Think Free Office, and hitting a point of frustration with Google Docs. Microsoft has recently felt the pressure to bring their office products to the web via Microsoft Office Live. The public has embraced these tools, and it has created stiff competition among these companies. They are all scrambling to bring the public the features they need and want, without the enormous overhead of a desktop office suite. Recently Adobe has taken the plunge into this arena.

Adobe’s office suite currently consists of the following applications:

• Buzzword, a robust wysiwyg word processor
• ConnectNow, a web conferencing application
• Acrobat for PDF creation
• File upload, sharing, and management tools
• An Adobe AIR desktop application

Although this suite was just launched, it has great potential. The file management tools were launched at the beginning, and are not an after thought like they were when Google Docs launched. File upload, sharing, and editing are painless. Everything loads extremely quickly in Firefox and from the desktop AIR application. ConnectNow is an ambitious addition to an Office Suite. None of the competing suites have an application to compete with it. The AIR application also provides a degree of comfort for people who still prefer desktop applications.

I am sure that Adobe plans to add a spreadsheet application and a presentation application in the future. Once these additional applications are added, this suite will force the competition to continue to innovate. Adobe definitely has the edge on the competition from a design perspective, and as these applications are further developed, Google Docs, Think Free Office, Microsoft, and Zoho will have to recognize that this suite is a viable, easy-to-use, aesthetically pleasing, and functional alternative to their offerings.

Tiny USB Office is definitely one application everyone who owns a flash drive should have. The utility packs quite a punch with the number of utilities they pack in a meager 2.5 megabytes.

With Tiny USB Office you can create PDF files, spreadsheets, flowcharts, word files and even transfer files using FTP. If you decide to send out a quick email you can do it too along with chatting with your MSN buddies. And if you are paranoid about security you can easily use the include data encryption software to protect your files.

Tiny USB Office is comes from the same folks who also created Floppy Office, a useful collection of softwares you could once carry in the now outdated 1.4MB Floppy drives.

Tiny USB Office comes bundled in with the following softwares:

• Database Creation – with CSVed
• Data Encryption – with DScrypt
• Email Client Software – with NPopUK
• File Compression – with 100 Zipper
• File Sharing – with HFS
• File Transfer – with FTP Wanderer
• Flowchart Creation – with EVE Vector Editor
• MSN Messenger Client – with PixaMSN
• Tree-Style Outliner Software – with Mempad
• PDF Creation – with PDF Producer
• Password Recovery – with XPass
• Secure Deletion – with DSdel
• Spreadsheet Creation – with Spread32
• Text Editing – with TedNotepad
• Word Processing – with Kpad
• Program Launching – with Qsel

We would definitely recommend this utility to everyone since it is only 2.5MB and would barely take up any space on your flash drive.

Tiny USB Office Home | Download Tiny USB Office 

If you read the title and sighed because you’re sick of hearing about word processors, do try to read this one because even though you could use MS Word, WordPad, or Notepad for your word processing needs, there’s another cool and free utility that is better than all of those for most people!

Word processors started out as replacement for typewriters and provided a great benefit in those times. However, as the software progressed, Word processors turned into giant bloated applications designed with hordes of features that only corporate users would ever need. Unfortunately, there is no Microsoft Word Lite edition without all of the useless features that make it run slow or crash your computer!

Jarte is a WordPad based, FREE word processor whose unique interface will make you feel like you are piloting a swift, nimble yacht by comparison. It doesn’t look anything like your normal office word processor, but it can handle every task equally well!

From any Word Processor you would expect it to be able to handle Word documents, font and paragraph formatting, spell checking, print preview, and more. And while Jarte performs all the standard functions well, the most important aspect of Jarte is the numerous small details that make it an efficient and enjoyable tool for creating documents. Here are some of the nicer features of Jarte:

• Tabbed document windows for easy access to your open documents
• Larger buttons for the most commonly used functions
• Instant dictionary and thesaurus word lookup (integrates with free WordWeb)
• Spell check and text search tools that do not park themselves on top of the text you are trying to edit
• Single click bookmarking that make bookmarks both useful and usable
• Instant access to the documents and folders you designate as your favorites
• Instant access to the fonts you designate as your favorites
• Use of the mouse scroll wheel button to copy and paste text

It’s based on the WordPad engine, so you can be assured that the code is stable and will not cause problems with Windows. It simply adds a lot of good features on top of WordPad. It’s fully compatible with Windows Vista and it can open RTF, DOC, TXT, and DOCX (Office 2007) files.

Another cool feature of the software is that it does not need to be installed, but simply can be run by executing the EXE file. This means you can run the program from a USB stick if you like on any computer!

Overall, it’s a cool word processor that is better than WordPad and Notepad in terms of features and also still faster than MS Word because it only includes the most popular features. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve been looking for a good Notepad replacement! Enjoy!