PHORWITZ@BBNG.ARPA (07/10/84)
I'm seriously thinking of getting a word processor for my mother, who is 1) a writer (books -- non-fiction and most recently a novel) 2) having trouble with her eyes, which makes it difficult for her to read fine print, and 3) a virulent technophobe. I am leaning toward a Macintosh, because it is 1) cute 2) able to display (and print) a variety of different fonts and, more importantly, font sizes 3) user-(you should pardon the expression)friendly. The $64 ($3495?) question is: is there anything available for this machine that a REAL writer would call a word processor? (i.e. able to support files longer than a few pages with transparent paging, leap over tall buildings with a single bound, etc.) I've got the rest of the summer to make up my mind (she's off writing her novel at a writer's colony -- on a typewriter, of course) and I don't want to buy a (shudder!) PC-clone unless I am forced to--but I am prepared to be forced! Helpful advice gratefully received by, Paul
jrodrig@MITRE-GATEWAY.ARPA (07/10/84)
From: jose rodriguez <jrodrig@MITRE-GATEWAY.ARPA> Why would a virulent technophobe want a word processor? (With even a Mac you have to learn something about computers, like files, swapping disks, formatting disks and so on.) By the way we got a couple of Macs and I wonder who thought they are fast. Also has anyone figured how to play the alice game? I just keep being killed and can hardly move the alice figure. Jose jrodrig@mitre-gw
David.Anderson@CMU-CS-G.ARPA (07/10/84)
Take a look at Microsoft Word. I haven't used it, but it promises much more than MacWrite -- long documents, can have several documents open simultaneously (in separate windows, of course), footnotes, etc. In principle it sounds pretty good -- in practice, I don't know. The review in MacWorld was generally positive, but complained about it being slow. The most important thing in Alice is to keep moving, and quickly.
jmoore@opus.UUCP (07/17/84)
Buy the Cairn Terrier.