computer type question

[johnik]

Greetings all, my compo runs on windows 8.1, i use "wordpad" for my literary masterpieces (short stories), the other day i did a defrag and general cleanup as recomended, imagine my supprise when i discovered all my hard work had dissapeared .
luckily i had E mailed it in pieces to a friend so was able to get it back from there.
can anyone recomend something like "word" i used to have on my old compo....has to be free as i am a cheapskate

cheers all

 

[julianf]

It wasn't wordpads "fault" so, if you are happy using it, continue.

Just be more careful what you allow the computer to "clean up" next time.

 

[Munkul]

Buy Microsoft Office. Even an older version. Don't be tight. It's the best software on the market, always has been, probably always will.
Get a secondhand version or a "non retail" version if you have to.

Open Office was ok... I suppose it's free... I wouldn't want it personally, but I suppose some people jump through hoops to use free stuff...

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Open office mate. Simple

Setup Google drive to backup your work folder to the cloud and sleep easier.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Apache OpenOffice - Official Site - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

The official home page of the Apache OpenOffice open source project, home of OpenOffice Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Base.

www.openoffice.org

 

[Fastdruid]

As another free alternative google docs isn't bad and has the advantage of storing your data in "The Cloud" so if your PC blows up tomorrow you won't lose everything.

https://docs.google.com/

Not as good as Word but better than Wordpad.

 

[heldtogetherwithblutack]

last open office major update was 2014, Libre Office best of the free choices
LO has UK English spelling and grammar options, along with offline help

 

[the snooper]

Greetings all, my compo runs on windows 8.1, i use "wordpad" for my literary masterpieces (short stories), the other day i did a defrag and general cleanup as recomended, imagine my supprise when i discovered all my hard work had dissapeared .
luckily i had E mailed it in pieces to a friend so was able to get it back from there.
can anyone recomend something like "word" i used to have on my old compo....has to be free as i am a cheapskate

cheers all

If you find youve lost anything else just download undelete run it and recover anything good enough to be recovered

 

[johnik]

thanks all, ill have a play when i have sorted all the speeling mistakes.
story spoiler...she asks him to marry her and he accepts

 

[bigegg]

If "all" you are doing is writing "short stories", I'd recommend something like "notepad2" ("notepad+"?).
Word or an equivalent is *massively* over-specced for the job. Do you need multiple fonts in one document? Or imbedded tables/files? Or all the other bloat?

More importantly: get something like "Dropbox" to back up your files to. AND USE IT!!!

 

[Maker]

Vim is free if you're a masochist.


I'd continue using Wordpad if it works for you, just be more careful with storage and back-ups.

 

[badabec]

thanks all, ill have a play when i have sorted all the speeling mistakes.
story spoiler...she asks him to marry her and he accepts

You write horror stories?

 

[Kayos]

Vim is free if you're a masochist.


I'd continue using Wordpad if it works for you, just be more careful with storage and back-ups.

VIM is for pussies, monochrome vi is what the masochists use. Although once you learn the eleventy million commands it's actually very powerful. These days for quick edits I use Nano.

Continue with Wordpad if you are happy with it, open office, libre office, Google docs etc are all poor imitations of Office.

I am probably classed as a power user though, previous employer refused to pay for Project so I made a simple version is Excel

 

[Maker]

VIM is for pussies, monochrome vi is what the masochists use. Although once you learn the eleventy million commands it's actually very powerful. These days for quick edits I use Nano.

I use LaTeX for most things, where does that rank on the masochism scale? Not to be confused with latex and proper masochism of course, probably get a bit sweaty writing in that.