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AbiWord vs. MS Word, For Now
Gsurface writes "If you have decided that it is time to kill MS Word, then it is time to look for an alternative. Flexbeta.net compares AbiWord, part of a larger project known as AbiSource, with MS Word and asks: is AbiWord a worthy MS Word replacement? Not to ruin the ending but according to the article the only draw back to AbiWord is that it currently does not feature a grammar checker, though a plug-in is in the works." (Also on this front, AbiWord's native Mac OS X version is labeled experimental, but seems to work very nicely.)
AbiWord is part of a larger project known as AbiSource, which was started by the SourceGear Corporation. The goal of the project was the development of a cross-platform, Open Source office suite beginning with AbiWord, the project's word processor.
User Interface
The user interface in AbiWord is very similar to that of MS Word except that AbiWord uses much bigger icons than MS Word. In my opinion this is a good thing simply because the icons are easier to see and distinguish; not only that, but you would imagine that because the icons are bigger there would be less space available, this is actually not true because AbiWord places the most used icons in the taskbar. All of the usual features such as creating a new document, opening and saving a document are all conveniently placed on the taskbar with the addition of a few others you won't see on the Word task bar by default; I am referring to the "Show/hide formatting marks" icon in AbiWord which by default is placed on the taskbar. Other useful icons include indenting, numbering and inserting an image.
There are a few minor differences in the user interface of AbiWord from that of MS Word such as the bold, italic and underline icons; in AbiWord these are represented by an icon with just one letter, A, simulating the type of formatting, bold, italic or underline. The reason the bold, underline, italic icons are different is because AbiWord conforms to the gnome HIG (Thanks Sum1). Other than this, MS Word users would not have a hard time getting used to AbiWord.
In addition, AbiWord also loads faster than MS Word; it also responds much faster and takes up less system resources. Notice from the screenshot below how AbiWord uses only about 6MB of memory usage while MS Word uses over 30MB. AbiWord really appeals to those users with 64MB RAM.
Features
The first feature I spotted in AbiWord is the ability to paste previously copied paragraph formatting onto a selected text. For example, if you highlight certain text and copy it, AbiWord not only copies the text itself but it also copies the formatting; so instead of just pasting the text, you can also highlight text within your document, and apply the formatting of the previously copied text. MS Word also has this feature called "Format Painter".
Another feature I found unique to AbiWord is when you restore the AbiWord application itself, make is smaller, the text within your document is minimized. If you look at the screenshots below, you will notice how the text is made smaller when the AbiWord window is restored. The first screenshot shows AbiWord maximized while the second screenshot shows AbiWord restored; notice how the text is minimized in the restored screenshot. This feature is useful because you don't have to scroll sideways to view the entire text. Also shown below is MS Word restored to show the differences between the two.
Under the tools tab, AbiWord has everything including a spell checker, which we will cover later, word count, document history, revisions, and Mail Merge. Another great feature about AbiWord is the ability to add plug-ins. AbiWord plug-ins feature a multitude of features such as a dictionary and thesaurus, a Google plug-in and two translation plug-ins from Babelfish and FreeTranslation. Also included in the plug-in is AbiPaint, an image manipulating plug-in. The Google plug-in allows you to search Google with your selected text. For a full list of plug-ins and future plug