Goodbye, Microsoft Word

No one likes to see a relationship come to an end. Especially a long-standing relationship. But, you know the old saying: “All good things must come to an end”. I’ve had a relationship with Microsoft Word for YEARS. I’m pretty sure it started sometime during my middle school years. We’ve been good friends. Then, something went wrong.

My nine-year-old Dell laptop was on its last leg, in terms of battery life. The battery lost the ability to hold a charge, and the laptop would only function if it was plugged in. Plus, my version of Microsoft Word, was horribly outdated. I finally broke down and purchased a new laptop: a Chromebook, by Acer. There’s just one problem: it didn’t come with Word. Apparently, this is a trend among tech manufacturers. Laptops used to come with Word, and other Microsoft programs. Now, those programs need to be purchased separately. Plus, this is a Chromebook we’re talking about, so I understood. But, even the HP and Dell laptops I looked at, didn’t have Word. My new laptop was only $149…I wasn’t about to shell out an extra $200 for Word. The $149 had already set me back.  Instead, I did two things:

  1. Got a subscription to the Word App via Google Play, so I could continue to open my Word files at home.
  2. Forced myself to become acclimated with Google Docs.

Word cost me $7.61 a month ($6.99 plus tax). Sales from my online store were taking care of that plus the cost of hosting each month, so W.E. was basically paying for it’s own services. However, once I got into Google Docs (I mean, really got into it), I decided, maybe it was time to say goodbye to Word. So, I did. The cord has been cut. 

Of course, I still download my work from Google and save it on a flash drive, but its nice to know everything is available to me online, whether I’m at home or on a computer at work. Of course, some of the margins I use for the manuscripts of the books I publish needed to be adjusted, but hey: nothing worth having is ever easy to obtain. 

Woolaston Entertainment

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