I'm not a big user of MS Word and its many functions, but anybody who devotes himself to rage against Gates, Microsoft and his ridiculous OS is OK in my book!!

This is an oldie but goodie.

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew...

I have found most of the problems with computer applications lie somewhere between the user's chair and the keyboard. I am a software developer, and some of us take extreme pride in the fact that some of the most popular programs are designed for use by nearly any type of user from nearly any locale in the world.

It's unfortunate that the majority of computer application critics rarely acknowledge the power of today's cheap technology. I dare say that the majority of today's "blog enthusiasts" would not have had the patience to suffer through the technology of 1990's ARPAnet text-based content delivery applications. Today's technology basically offers us the equivalent of a personal typesetter and publisher in our own home office, available 24 hours a day. This is a luxury that has had no equivalence in our modern society.

I'm sorry if the footnotes automatically default to lower-case Roman numerals... It can be changed in a simple pull-down box, and Word will apply the correct number formatting until you change the default setting again. You can even insert your own special footnote symbols if you feel the need. And if this isn't simple enough for Menand, then I suggest that he hire his own personal typesetter to handle all of these difficult problems for him.

(1) :: is thankful that he is in the wonderful word of math/CS/physics, where LaTeX and BiBTeX automatically build beautifully typeset documents with perfect bilbiographies with no user intervention ::

(2) Before Menand criticizes some of the spell-checker's suggestions, perhaps he should consider the extreme difficulty of a computer deciding which sequences of words make sense and which don't. Word's spelling (and grammar) checker is by no means perfect, but I don't know anything out there which is better. (disclaimer: I worked last summer in the MS group which designed the spell checker, so I take the criticism a bit too personally :-) )

Well, I use footnotes, etc. all the time, and my defaults started with the correct numbers, not Roman Numerals.

WordXP is finally a word good enough that I bought it for home and gave up on WordPerfect, which got buggy on envelope printing an edition ago.

Anyway, just because an inept user is an idiot who ought to just stick with a typewriter is no reason to attack a software program that is actually rather good.

After all, if he doesn't like it, let him use WordStar -- he can still buy a copy of 7.x on ebay after all.

I despise Word, but my office is switching to it because everyone else uses it. WordPerfect is vastly superior (my old WordPerfect 8 beats the newest MSWord any day in my book), but MS successfully drove Corel into the ground. What a shame.

On this one, I must side with "NonPundit," although I thought Menand's review was hilarious. Computers and only do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do. And unlike most things in life, the default can be changed. Actually, I rather like MS Word, but most products from Mr. Softie are better on a Mac, anyway.

Menand was right on. The defenders of Word on this board all operate on the assumption shared by every one of that abysmal program's defenders, of which there are surprisingly many: that it is the job of the human to conform to the program, rather than the job of the designer to create a program that conforms to humans' needs.

Too bad WordPerfect 5.0 is a dinosaur: though its range of functions was limited compared to Word, there was no folderol, and "help" actually was. As for Word, I can't imagine how it would be possible to create a more godawful program, and the fact that so many defend it only shows the lengths to which people will go to shore up bad ideas.

Menand was right on. The defenders of Word on this board all operate on the assumption shared by every one of that abysmal program's defenders, of which there are surprisingly many: that it is the job of the human to conform to the program, rather than the job of the designer to create a program that conforms to humans' needs.

Too bad WordPerfect 5.0 is a dinosaur: though its range of functions was limited compared to Word, there was no folderol, and "help" actually was. As for Word, I can't imagine how it would be possible to create a more godawful program, and the fact that so many defend it only shows the lengths to which people will go to shore up bad ideas.