Weapon of Choice

Update to the previous post: with the help of a couple friends, my system is now running Windows 7 Professional and MS Office 2010, also professional.

I was told there would be a bit of a learning curve to deal with, and truer words were never said. However, I found myself able to carry out the tasks for which I most often use the PC without much difficulty.

The most noticeable improvement is the banishment of those annoying, irremovable footers that Open and Libre Office automatically inserted into my manuscripts whenever I added a header. On the other hand, the book that I'd pruned down to 1295 pages is now in excess of 1400 due solely to the act of opening it in Word.

Oh well, give and take...

It's a Poor Craftsman Who Blames His Tools

I'll now be discussing my ongoing ordeal with word processors. Fair warning to anyone who doesn't find that topic fascinating.

This PC never had MS Office, so I started out using Open Office. When various weird formatting errors popped up, I switched to Libre Office. That program worked slightly better but still, you get what you pay for.

I finally bought Windows 7 Professional as well as MS Office 2010. Upon trying to install Windows 7, I was informed that I couldn't simply upgrade from Vista Home Basic, adding another snag to my plans. Plus, I'd been running the 32 bit version of Vista due to the mistaken belief that my processor couldn't handle the 64 bit version. Now if I want to upgrade to Windows 7 64, I'll have to erase all of my settings and data and start over. So I'll be sticking with Windows 7 32.