How is not forking out several hundred pounds for an office suite I don't need snobbery?

Because, like it or not, you do need the capability of reading what people send to you, unless you are such a snob that you don't care.

I didn't make the rules, but I do have to live by them, and it is an unfortunate fact that MS Word probably has an 80% market share. In the face of such overwhelming market dominance, it is not unreasonable to expect people to be able to read documents in that format.

I do have MS Word on my computer, but the only thing I use it for is to read documents sent to me in *.doc format. Unlike you, I don't use a modern word processor for my daily use -- my word processor isn't one of those newcomers from last decade, I mean 1992, that's less than 10 years old, probably still full of bugs and things. MY word processing software was copyright 1988, and since there are probably only about a dozen people in the whole world still using it, I always send my files in ascii or RTF. Tony knows what I use, and even mentioned it once on this bbs. Anybody remember?

Anyway, you can pick up a copy of MS Word as part of a Microsoft Works suite pretty cheaply (around $60 is the going price) on ebay because people are selling their OEM software that came with their new computer, unregistered and unopened. Ebay has a rule now that you can't sell OEM software unless you act as a manufacturer, and include either a hard drive or a motherboard with the software. This is funny -- you buy MS Works and get an old 80 MB hard drive or a '286 motherboard with it to meet the letter of the rules.

[soapbox] I know this is a contrarian opinion, but Bill Gates and Beelzebub are really not one and the same. Think back to what it was like running a computer 15 years ago. Do you really want to go back to C:> prompts and setting up separate print drivers for each piece of software you install? Microsoft is directly responsible for most of the changes made in the last couple of decades, and most of those changes have been for the better. [/soapbox]

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"