appleworks has always been bundled on all the macs i have purchased. but, when i eagerly unboxed my 12" powerbook (bought just before the upgrade) i was suprized to learn that appleworks wasn't there. not even on any of the install discs or anything. looks like we'll have to pony up that cash now. but it's well worth it.
appleworks may not have some of the bells and whistles, but most that it is lacking are unneeded. its clean, simple, stable code. and i have had no trouble saving as .doc or opening M$ docs. and appleworks outline feature is much better and easier to customize than M$.
Hey, don't even think about using Apple works. (You talk about buggy software). More importantly . . .
When you do produce a manuscript for publication, no one wants it as an AppleWorks document. It's got to be Word (or WordPerfect). If you just want to dink around and write stuff for yourself, that's fine. If you want a publisher who will pay you, Word is a no-brainer.
And it's a much better tool. Outlining, spell checking, all down the line. If you start with AppleWorks, you'll eventually switch. So save yourself the trouble and start out with MS Word.
true, there are few publishers that would want an appleworks file. but that is why appleworks can save into a plethora of different formats. again, M$ has more bells and whistles and "everyone" uses it. but i prefer to do actual typing and writing in appleworks and then save in word format (if i need to). then, i can fix any formatting problems caused by the transfer in my copy of Word. i have Word but only to check the formatting of things and to open the occaisional thing that appleworks can't handle.
Hey Guys,....I appreciate the debate of the pro's and con's of each product. I'm still waiting for my new 12" stock powerbook...my email from Apple says "it should ship on or before October 10th"...yikes... My point is that I have some time to do some research on this. Since I will be sending my word compatible file to a publisher or printing house - it has to be flawless in transfer (from Mac to PC). I'm still leaning towards nisus express writer (www.nisus.com), but I may give in for the student edition of Office X...but I don't want to.lol.
Hey Guys,....I appreciate the debate of the pro's and con's of each product. I'm still waiting for my new 12" stock powerbook...my email from Apple says "it should ship on or before October 10th"...yikes... My point is that I have some time to do some research on this. Since I will be sending my word compatible file to a publisher or printing house - it has to be flawless in transfer (from Mac to PC). I'm still leaning towards nisus express writer (www.nisus.com), but I may give in for the student edition of Office X...but I don't want to.lol.
If it has to be flawless, then I think that you really need MS Word for OSX - sorry to say.
i concur. if you want it to look like it was written in word, the best thing to use is word.
for as much as M$ is evil, word is really not a bad program. it's just big and full of things that most folks don't ever need. but really, it works very well. the mac version is a lot better than the windoze version for sure!
this will be a long week and a half, but the wait will be worth it. congrats on your purchase and let us know what you decide on the word processor issue. as well as your impression of the 12". i love mine!
the mac version is a lot better than the windoze version for sure!
Except that the Windows version is magnitudes faster! And the Windows version can save files with names longer than 31 characters! et cetera ad infinitum!
appleworks has always been bundled on all the macs i have purchased. but, when i eagerly unboxed my 12" powerbook (bought just before the upgrade) i was suprized to learn that appleworks wasn't there. not even on any of the install discs or anything. looks like we'll have to pony up that cash now. but it's well worth it.
It's only bundled on the "i" machines (iMacs, iBooks and eMacs), along with the other important stuff, like Deimos Rising and Ottomatic. Instead of it on the pro line you get omnioutliner, omnigraffle, graphic converter, art director's toolkit, and other stuff...
Quote:
appleworks may not have some of the bells and whistles, but most that it is lacking are unneeded. its clean, simple, stable code. and i have had no trouble saving as .doc or opening M$ docs. and appleworks outline feature is much better and easier to customize than M$.
Prov. 1:5
You will get an occasional weirdness in the translation... but it's unusual. Really, it will depend on what you actually are doing when you're doing your word-processing. If you want to produce the über-complex word-processing document from Hell, with change tracking, embedded graphics, tables etc, you're probably better off in Word (but only because of the translation issue ? otherwise, AppleWorks will do all these things much better (except change tracking, which it doesn't have); Word's organisation of non-text context is somewhere between extraordinarily bad and hellish). If your chapters aren't going to be the complex ? feel free (liberated even!) to go for an alternative.
And Appleworks outline feature is probably the best I've seen, although what they did to style management in 6 was a big step backwards, and made everything more difficult...
As for a ten-day delay: well, maybe you'll get Panther for free!
Except that the Windows version is magnitudes faster! And the Windows version can save files with names longer than 31 characters! et cetera ad infinitum!
Yeah, it kind of puzzles me when people claim that the Mac version is better. Really, it's just more of the same. And it's so slow
Ugh. Oh for the days when the Word codebase was written for the Mac first... (well, not really, but you know what I mean).
Except that the Windows version is magnitudes faster! And the Windows version can save files with names longer than 31 characters! et cetera ad infinitum!
Well, there is a little lag in Word for OSX, but that is on my G3 500. I imagine it is quite a bit better on faster machines (but I could be wrong, not having tried it out on any other Mac). I am hoping that Panther also improves matters in this department and that the Mac BU at MS does any necessary reworking to fully take advantage of Panther.
Ultimately 'speed' is not really a big issue, however, in wordprocessing software. Even on my slow machine, tiny little lags are more of an annoyance than anything else.
My main worry about Word for OSX is whether MS actually is committed to continuing to develop and support this product.
Well, there is a little lag in Word for OSX, but that is on my G3 500. I imagine it is quite a bit better on faster machines (but I could be wrong, not having tried it out on any other Mac).
It still lags on my iBook 800, particularly just after you finish typing a word while it tries to work out whether to apply its demonic word-morphing technology.
I must admit that I've used it so little on my MDD 867 that I couldn't offer an opinion; although my vague memory from last time I used it was that it was even then a bit... gluey.
Quote:
I am hoping that Panther also improves matters in this department and that the Mac BU at MS does any necessary reworking to fully take advantage of Panther.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Anyone using Panther at the moment care to comment?
Quote:
Ultimately 'speed' is not really a big issue, however, in wordprocessing software. Even on my slow machine, tiny little lags are more of an annoyance than anything else.
The kind of frustration it generates isn't conducive to concentration, I find.
I actually like the MS Office suite, despite the occasional instability (I find that word crashes less than Safari, for example, on my Mac). I have tried many of the alternatives, but since I regularly trade documents with collaborators, and they are almost all Windows users, I need the formatting to come through properly.
More importantly - track changes saves me hours of time when working on manuscripts with collaborators...if I could not track changes (and imbed comments), work would be difficult for me.
So, while I dislike MS as a company, I have to admit that, despite the bloat, I think Word etc do a good job.
I find myself in the unusual position of defending Office for OSX, when I previously criticized it ? even in this thread. And I do still think that it is a bloated pig and that, at some point, they are going to have to reconsider it from ground up ? both in Windows and OSX.
However, it is not as if Office does not work at an advanced level, nor that its many, many features are useless, nor that it does not help millions of people be productive. And I do think that the OSX version has some advantages. Some of these are due to a better OS:
I think that it looks better in OSX than in the Windows version
I find it more stable than even my XP Office at work ? which freezes more than it should.
And that things like text select and operation of pull down menus are smoother (instead of the standard jerky Windows movements).
Some improvements might be due to better code in the Office software version for OSX itself:
Document formatting is more stable for me in OSX. This is the standard Word issue of adding and removing text and finding that the formatting jumps to something new and unusual in that portion of the document, or even the document as a whole (This is one of my main gripes about Word ? I never feel that I am fully in control). I am not saying this does not happen in OSX, but it seems to happen less for me than in Windows.
Also, the default contextual menus in OSX Office seem to be set up with more of the needed features ? and less of the less-used features. I know that all of this can be customized, but I found that the XP defaults just installed on my machine were terrible, while the OSX ones were quite intuitive.
Finally, a couple more comments about compatibility. I previously said that compatibility was flawless between Office for OSX and Windows. I don?t want to mislead: this does not mean that compatibility is always 100%. I have had very minor issues of bullet point character changes and of pagination breaks being in different places. I know that others have had different, additional problems. However, keep in mind that even between different versions of Office there can be some formatting hiccups ? I just had this happen to me on a document prepared in Office running on Windows 98 that looked different on my XP machine. Above all, however, these minor issues are of a different order of magnitude compared with issues caused when coverting file formats between Office and other software, like AppleWorks. My own experience was that the formatting is even more likely to go off when converting and that if you convert back and forth many times, the document itself can become unstable and sometimes, unusable. This has not happened to me, however, when taking ?.doc? documents ? even very complex documents - back and forth between OSX and XP.
Bottom line is that I liked AppleWorks, but I work in Office. However, when Office improves ? or some other program takes over as the standard, I will be happy.
Finally, a couple more comments about compatibility. I previously said that compatibility was flawless between Office for OSX and Windows. I don?t want to mislead: this does not mean that compatibility is always 100%. I have had very minor issues of bullet point character changes and of pagination breaks being in different places. I know that others have had different, additional problems. However, keep in mind that even between different versions of Office there can be some formatting hiccups ? I just had this happen to me on a document prepared in Office running on Windows 98 that looked different on my XP machine. Above all, however, these minor issues are of a different order of magnitude compared with issues caused when coverting file formats between Office and other software, like AppleWorks. My own experience was that the formatting is even more likely to go off when converting and that if you convert back and forth many times, the document itself can become unstable and sometimes, unusable. This has not happened to me, however, when taking ?.doc? documents ? even very complex documents - back and forth between OSX and XP.
Quite possibly, a large part of the issue is going to be this: how critical is your exact formatting going to be ? or are your publishers just going to read and edit the text and then lay it out for publication... Word looks like the way to go if the former is the case; the debate is rather more open if it's the latter.
I didn't read every post so this may have been covered, but you have a few options to get your data from your Mac to a PC. If you get any PowerBook, it will at the very least include a combo drive, so you can burn CD-Rs with the data and read it on a PC (just create an ISO 9660 disc).
Another option that I personally like is a USB flash drive. I picked up a 256MB Jumpdrive made by Lexar at CompUSA the other day. They're on sale for $50. It's waaaay faster than a floppy and it automounts in both Windows and OS X so it's painless to use. If you use Linux, you can mount it if you are using kernel 2.4 or above. I'm using mine to transfer the C projects I'm working on between my PB and my partner's Gateway laptop and it works without a hitch.
Right now, I'm leaning towards "nisus writer express". Reasonably priced, "word" compatible, and the interface seems quite good. Most reviews on the net favor it.... I don't want "microsoft" anything on my new baby...
Anyone else use Nisus writer express? Comments?
You might want to take a look at this link. This program is a full office suite, and best of all its free. There is a Mac OS X port, which has all the features of the Linux or PC versions.
I've used openoffice on Linux and document sharing is very accurate. Also, some of the complex formatting and template creation functions in Word are present in Openoffice's Word implementation.
Quite possibly, a large part of the issue is going to be this: how critical is your exact formatting going to be ? or are your publishers just going to read and edit the text and then lay it out for publication... Word looks like the way to go if the former is the case; the debate is rather more open if it's the latter.
Actually, many publishers would end up firing up their DTP app of choice and rebuilding the layout from scratch if you sent them a Word document as well.
Actually, many publishers would end up firing up their DTP app of choice and rebuilding the layout from scratch if you sent them a Word document as well.
Word is a terrible DTP app.
You're right - I was actually having some difficulty in imagining a circumstance in which publishers would actually use Word for DTP (real people don't do this, do they? Tell me they don't! Actually, my paternal-unit does, but he works in the Australian Public Service, which just about says it all really), or in which they'd do anything else than reconstruct the document in a real program.
Possibly there's a psychological advantage at least in knowing that your publishers know how you would like the thing to be laid out.
Chikan: Since the educational version is way cheap, maybe you should also investigate a nice DTP program like Indesign (not exactly a word processor, but hey, it's word-compatable! (kinda))? What kind of books are you writing?
You might want to take a look at this link. This program is a full office suite, and best of all its free. There is a Mac OS X port, which has all the features of the Linux or PC versions.
I've used openoffice on Linux and document sharing is very accurate. Also, some of the complex formatting and template creation functions in Word are present in Openoffice's Word implementation.
Hope this helps
Yep, OpenOffice is pretty cool. It does particularly well in compatability with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents (arguably better in some circumstances than Word itself). Due to a slight ms select agreement licencing weirdness at work, I'm running it on all the XP boxes until we can buy Office licences as a drop-in replacement for Office. I haven't had too many complaints yet ? the biggest compatability complaint being that people didn't realise that it doesn't save as a Word document by default, and were wondering why no one else could open the attachments that they were sending them.
It's main disadvantages on OS X, which don't really have much to do with utility, are the lack of a OS X native GUI (it runs in X11, a unix/linux gui tool, available for free from apple (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...formacosx.html) and elsewhere), and it's phenomenal ugliness. Word from the developers for OS X is that, unless further developer volunteers help them out, they won't have a OS X native GUI until mid-2005 (they're waiting for v2 to be released to start the GUI conversion work, for various reasons to do with the legacy codebase). It's also just a bit slow (largely in GUI responsiveness).
But this is only really a disadvantage if that's the kind of thing that really upsets you ? otherwise, it's great. Hopefully it's nice open document format will edge out the Word format sometime in the next decade. We can all hope, anyway.
Comments
appleworks may not have some of the bells and whistles, but most that it is lacking are unneeded. its clean, simple, stable code. and i have had no trouble saving as .doc or opening M$ docs. and appleworks outline feature is much better and easier to customize than M$.
just my two cents.
kyle
Prov. 1:5
When you do produce a manuscript for publication, no one wants it as an AppleWorks document. It's got to be Word (or WordPerfect). If you just want to dink around and write stuff for yourself, that's fine. If you want a publisher who will pay you, Word is a no-brainer.
And it's a much better tool. Outlining, spell checking, all down the line. If you start with AppleWorks, you'll eventually switch. So save yourself the trouble and start out with MS Word.
macintosh for productivity,
unix for development,
windows for solitaire.
kyle
Originally posted by chikan
Hey Guys,....I appreciate the debate of the pro's and con's of each product. I'm still waiting for my new 12" stock powerbook...my email from Apple says "it should ship on or before October 10th"...yikes... My point is that I have some time to do some research on this. Since I will be sending my word compatible file to a publisher or printing house - it has to be flawless in transfer (from Mac to PC). I'm still leaning towards nisus express writer (www.nisus.com), but I may give in for the student edition of Office X...but I don't want to.lol.
If it has to be flawless, then I think that you really need MS Word for OSX - sorry to say.
for as much as M$ is evil, word is really not a bad program. it's just big and full of things that most folks don't ever need. but really, it works very well. the mac version is a lot better than the windoze version for sure!
this will be a long week and a half, but the wait will be worth it. congrats on your purchase and let us know what you decide on the word processor issue. as well as your impression of the 12". i love mine!
cheers!
kyle
Originally posted by kddpop
for as much as M$ is evil, word is really not a bad program.
I think some of these people would disagree.
the mac version is a lot better than the windoze version for sure!
Except that the Windows version is magnitudes faster! And the Windows version can save files with names longer than 31 characters! et cetera ad infinitum!
Originally posted by kddpop
appleworks has always been bundled on all the macs i have purchased. but, when i eagerly unboxed my 12" powerbook (bought just before the upgrade) i was suprized to learn that appleworks wasn't there. not even on any of the install discs or anything. looks like we'll have to pony up that cash now. but it's well worth it.
It's only bundled on the "i" machines (iMacs, iBooks and eMacs), along with the other important stuff, like Deimos Rising and Ottomatic. Instead of it on the pro line you get omnioutliner, omnigraffle, graphic converter, art director's toolkit, and other stuff...
appleworks may not have some of the bells and whistles, but most that it is lacking are unneeded. its clean, simple, stable code. and i have had no trouble saving as .doc or opening M$ docs. and appleworks outline feature is much better and easier to customize than M$.
Prov. 1:5
You will get an occasional weirdness in the translation... but it's unusual. Really, it will depend on what you actually are doing when you're doing your word-processing. If you want to produce the über-complex word-processing document from Hell, with change tracking, embedded graphics, tables etc, you're probably better off in Word (but only because of the translation issue ? otherwise, AppleWorks will do all these things much better (except change tracking, which it doesn't have); Word's organisation of non-text context is somewhere between extraordinarily bad and hellish). If your chapters aren't going to be the complex ? feel free (liberated even!) to go for an alternative.
And Appleworks outline feature is probably the best I've seen, although what they did to style management in 6 was a big step backwards, and made everything more difficult...
As for a ten-day delay: well, maybe you'll get Panther for free!
Edit: misleading ambiguity corrected
Originally posted by Brad
Except that the Windows version is magnitudes faster! And the Windows version can save files with names longer than 31 characters! et cetera ad infinitum!
Yeah, it kind of puzzles me when people claim that the Mac version is better. Really, it's just more of the same. And it's so slow
Ugh. Oh for the days when the Word codebase was written for the Mac first... (well, not really, but you know what I mean).
Originally posted by Brad
I think some of these people would disagree.
Except that the Windows version is magnitudes faster! And the Windows version can save files with names longer than 31 characters! et cetera ad infinitum!
Well, there is a little lag in Word for OSX, but that is on my G3 500. I imagine it is quite a bit better on faster machines (but I could be wrong, not having tried it out on any other Mac). I am hoping that Panther also improves matters in this department and that the Mac BU at MS does any necessary reworking to fully take advantage of Panther.
Ultimately 'speed' is not really a big issue, however, in wordprocessing software. Even on my slow machine, tiny little lags are more of an annoyance than anything else.
My main worry about Word for OSX is whether MS actually is committed to continuing to develop and support this product.
Originally posted by Chinney
Well, there is a little lag in Word for OSX, but that is on my G3 500. I imagine it is quite a bit better on faster machines (but I could be wrong, not having tried it out on any other Mac).
It still lags on my iBook 800, particularly just after you finish typing a word while it tries to work out whether to apply its demonic word-morphing technology.
I must admit that I've used it so little on my MDD 867 that I couldn't offer an opinion; although my vague memory from last time I used it was that it was even then a bit... gluey.
I am hoping that Panther also improves matters in this department and that the Mac BU at MS does any necessary reworking to fully take advantage of Panther.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Anyone using Panther at the moment care to comment?
Ultimately 'speed' is not really a big issue, however, in wordprocessing software. Even on my slow machine, tiny little lags are more of an annoyance than anything else.
The kind of frustration it generates isn't conducive to concentration, I find.
More importantly - track changes saves me hours of time when working on manuscripts with collaborators...if I could not track changes (and imbed comments), work would be difficult for me.
So, while I dislike MS as a company, I have to admit that, despite the bloat, I think Word etc do a good job.
Fish
However, it is not as if Office does not work at an advanced level, nor that its many, many features are useless, nor that it does not help millions of people be productive. And I do think that the OSX version has some advantages. Some of these are due to a better OS:
I think that it looks better in OSX than in the Windows version
I find it more stable than even my XP Office at work ? which freezes more than it should.
And that things like text select and operation of pull down menus are smoother (instead of the standard jerky Windows movements).
Some improvements might be due to better code in the Office software version for OSX itself:
Document formatting is more stable for me in OSX. This is the standard Word issue of adding and removing text and finding that the formatting jumps to something new and unusual in that portion of the document, or even the document as a whole (This is one of my main gripes about Word ? I never feel that I am fully in control). I am not saying this does not happen in OSX, but it seems to happen less for me than in Windows.
Also, the default contextual menus in OSX Office seem to be set up with more of the needed features ? and less of the less-used features. I know that all of this can be customized, but I found that the XP defaults just installed on my machine were terrible, while the OSX ones were quite intuitive.
Finally, a couple more comments about compatibility. I previously said that compatibility was flawless between Office for OSX and Windows. I don?t want to mislead: this does not mean that compatibility is always 100%. I have had very minor issues of bullet point character changes and of pagination breaks being in different places. I know that others have had different, additional problems. However, keep in mind that even between different versions of Office there can be some formatting hiccups ? I just had this happen to me on a document prepared in Office running on Windows 98 that looked different on my XP machine. Above all, however, these minor issues are of a different order of magnitude compared with issues caused when coverting file formats between Office and other software, like AppleWorks. My own experience was that the formatting is even more likely to go off when converting and that if you convert back and forth many times, the document itself can become unstable and sometimes, unusable. This has not happened to me, however, when taking ?.doc? documents ? even very complex documents - back and forth between OSX and XP.
Bottom line is that I liked AppleWorks, but I work in Office. However, when Office improves ? or some other program takes over as the standard, I will be happy.
Originally posted by Chinney
Finally, a couple more comments about compatibility. I previously said that compatibility was flawless between Office for OSX and Windows. I don?t want to mislead: this does not mean that compatibility is always 100%. I have had very minor issues of bullet point character changes and of pagination breaks being in different places. I know that others have had different, additional problems. However, keep in mind that even between different versions of Office there can be some formatting hiccups ? I just had this happen to me on a document prepared in Office running on Windows 98 that looked different on my XP machine. Above all, however, these minor issues are of a different order of magnitude compared with issues caused when coverting file formats between Office and other software, like AppleWorks. My own experience was that the formatting is even more likely to go off when converting and that if you convert back and forth many times, the document itself can become unstable and sometimes, unusable. This has not happened to me, however, when taking ?.doc? documents ? even very complex documents - back and forth between OSX and XP.
Quite possibly, a large part of the issue is going to be this: how critical is your exact formatting going to be ? or are your publishers just going to read and edit the text and then lay it out for publication... Word looks like the way to go if the former is the case; the debate is rather more open if it's the latter.
Another option that I personally like is a USB flash drive. I picked up a 256MB Jumpdrive made by Lexar at CompUSA the other day. They're on sale for $50. It's waaaay faster than a floppy and it automounts in both Windows and OS X so it's painless to use. If you use Linux, you can mount it if you are using kernel 2.4 or above. I'm using mine to transfer the C projects I'm working on between my PB and my partner's Gateway laptop and it works without a hitch.
Originally posted by chikan
Right now, I'm leaning towards "nisus writer express". Reasonably priced, "word" compatible, and the interface seems quite good. Most reviews on the net favor it.... I don't want "microsoft" anything on my new baby...
Anyone else use Nisus writer express? Comments?
You might want to take a look at this link. This program is a full office suite, and best of all its free. There is a Mac OS X port, which has all the features of the Linux or PC versions.
I've used openoffice on Linux and document sharing is very accurate. Also, some of the complex formatting and template creation functions in Word are present in Openoffice's Word implementation.
Hope this helps
Originally posted by staphbaby
Quite possibly, a large part of the issue is going to be this: how critical is your exact formatting going to be ? or are your publishers just going to read and edit the text and then lay it out for publication... Word looks like the way to go if the former is the case; the debate is rather more open if it's the latter.
Actually, many publishers would end up firing up their DTP app of choice and rebuilding the layout from scratch if you sent them a Word document as well.
Word is a terrible DTP app.
Originally posted by Amorph
Actually, many publishers would end up firing up their DTP app of choice and rebuilding the layout from scratch if you sent them a Word document as well.
Word is a terrible DTP app.
You're right - I was actually having some difficulty in imagining a circumstance in which publishers would actually use Word for DTP (real people don't do this, do they? Tell me they don't! Actually, my paternal-unit does, but he works in the Australian Public Service, which just about says it all really), or in which they'd do anything else than reconstruct the document in a real program.
Possibly there's a psychological advantage at least in knowing that your publishers know how you would like the thing to be laid out.
Chikan: Since the educational version is way cheap, maybe you should also investigate a nice DTP program like Indesign (not exactly a word processor, but hey, it's word-compatable! (kinda))? What kind of books are you writing?
Originally posted by feliperal
You might want to take a look at this link. This program is a full office suite, and best of all its free. There is a Mac OS X port, which has all the features of the Linux or PC versions.
I've used openoffice on Linux and document sharing is very accurate. Also, some of the complex formatting and template creation functions in Word are present in Openoffice's Word implementation.
Hope this helps
Yep, OpenOffice is pretty cool. It does particularly well in compatability with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents (arguably better in some circumstances than Word itself). Due to a slight ms select agreement licencing weirdness at work, I'm running it on all the XP boxes until we can buy Office licences as a drop-in replacement for Office. I haven't had too many complaints yet ? the biggest compatability complaint being that people didn't realise that it doesn't save as a Word document by default, and were wondering why no one else could open the attachments that they were sending them.
It's main disadvantages on OS X, which don't really have much to do with utility, are the lack of a OS X native GUI (it runs in X11, a unix/linux gui tool, available for free from apple (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...formacosx.html) and elsewhere), and it's phenomenal ugliness. Word from the developers for OS X is that, unless further developer volunteers help them out, they won't have a OS X native GUI until mid-2005 (they're waiting for v2 to be released to start the GUI conversion work, for various reasons to do with the legacy codebase). It's also just a bit slow (largely in GUI responsiveness).
But this is only really a disadvantage if that's the kind of thing that really upsets you ? otherwise, it's great. Hopefully it's nice open document format will edge out the Word format sometime in the next decade. We can all hope, anyway.