Microsoft Office Word

It's not clear when this list of alternatives to MS Word was created (or even when the comments were made). Might be nice to date your site to give some currency to your information.

But, as to my subject line, why is Nisus left out of this list? It's been a Mac word processor since near the beginning of Macintosh time. It was (and is now, again) known for its sophisticated search and macros. Try http://www.nisus.com/

(no, I'm not in any way associated with them)

The best word processing programme in my opinion, openoffice has some way to go before being up to its standard. Though I wish you could purchase it by itself, as its about the only thing in the ms office suite I use.

Microsoft Word pretty much sets the standard for word processors. And unlike Internet Explorer, which sets the lowest standard possible for browsers, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It costs a ton for what it does, but I think that Word does it pretty well.

Openoffice Writer I find to be the perfect alternative to this. Writer may take a little bit to load, but it can do a lot more than Word can, at least in my opinion. The newest Microsoft Word to me is confusing, annoying, and slow a lot of the time. I use Openoffice on my laptop all the time its great.

Let's break it down:
Openoffice is the standby free office choice. Unfortunately that means its as bloated as microsoft office, more so in recent years. It can take forever for writer to open, especially on older systems.
Abiword is lightning quick and pretty cool, but I've always had trouble with the menus being different and differently named from office, whereas openoffice makes more of an effort to match word.
Google docs is fantastic for online stuff, but fairly limited for anything but basic writing.

Q10 is a fantastic writeroom alternative for windows; it shows you a black screen with a simple statusbar and lets you write undistracted. It'll certainly add another step to your work flow but it's worth it for me for the simplicity and focus it gives. Not a replacement for an office program, but an addition to it