Journal: News & Comment

Nisus Writer Pro and Google Desktop for Mac

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A decade ago, I used to use Nisus Writer as my primary word processor, in favour of Microsoft Word or other alternatives. Nisus Writer Express has been the only version compatible with Mac OS X for several years, and it's rather too limited for me to use regularly.

Now there is a new public beta of Nisus Writer Pro, and I'm going to check it out. After a quick installation it certainly looks good—clean, powerful, fast. But I'll have to try it out and see how it works. I have complained often enough about Word, even though I teach courses about it. Apple's Pages has its place, but like NW Express, it's rather limited as a word processor, and works better as a lightweight desktop publishing program.

I've also installed Google Desktop for Mac. I was reluctant to, but have heard that it works a bit better than Apple's fairly lame Spotlight search, and, most importantly, will search Gmail messages even while I'm not online. Now that is cool.

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