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I ordered a new PC! Any good typing programs out there?

  • Thread starter swords
  • Start date
Hey folks, I finally got my room entirely remodeled (hence my dissapearance) I tore out the 35 year old neon orange shag carpet) repainted the once white walls, put in vinyl tiles and pretty much unpacked everything but I can't find my camera's memory card so i can show you what my new spot looks like!
Anyway, I've just made an order for a art/music workstation. It's a quad-core processor "xtreme" system with 4 GB of Ram (I can upgrade to 8 GB later but I'll wait til Rams a bit cheaper first) and a dual video card for CG creation software.

Anyway, as per my instructions my custom build will only come with Windows XP Pro 64 bit OS installed and no other software. However I would like to have a good typing program for writing compositions (with spellcheck!). Does MS Works (MS Word in particular) come as part of the XP Pro OS or do I need to go find a similar typing program? If so, is there a program any of you can suggest?
 
I'm pretty sure the retail version of Microsoft OS only comes with the OS. Well, and the basic word stuff so you can read "read me" files and such (word pad, note pad) I use microsoft word 2000. It works just fine and has all the other "extra" like excel, power point, access...
 
Open Office is free, works well, and you can save as just about every filetype under the sun.

I hope you enjoy your electricity bill! lol! Congrats on the new computer, that beast is gonna be FAST. lol
 
Is 850 Watts a lot of electricity draw for a PC? That's how much my power supply will equal if I need the secondary power pack for the graphics card. The guy said if it doesn't need it after he sets it up and tests it he'd refund my cash for the seperate video card power supply then it'll only be drawing 600 Watts. I hope the computer will be nicer than a big box store PC which is the only kind I've ever had. Since I wanted to turn my traditional art studio into a digital one I figured why not spend a bit more and get one that hopefully shouldn't be as buggy as another best buy computer (mines 3-4 years old too) so hopefully it won't be obsolete by the time I plug it in! lol

I don't need power point or spread sheets or any of those things (I don't know what those programs do!) but a nice typing program that has a personal dictionary and thesaurus would be cool. Do they sell MS Word as a stand alone program?
 
MS Word is sold as a standalone product. But do look into Open Office. I installed it on one of my computers at work and it is good.
 
I'd go with Microsoft Word. The only reason you would want to go with Word Perfect is if you have some personal hatred against Microsoft rendering their products completely out of the question. I used a version of Perfect a few years ago and I thought it was terrible. Of course, I can't remember why or what reasons left such a bad taste in my mouth, so I'm not much help.

xvart.
 
Is 850 Watts a lot of electricity draw for a PC?

Well, yes and no. The thing with power supplies is that, as I understand it, wattage is really the least informative way of describing the power supply in terms of "will it give enough juice to all of my hardware." On top of that, there's a craze among people to have power supplies with high wattages (same people who get LED lights. :p ) A power supply with a high wattage is gonna use a lot fo electricity, but it's the amps that "count" in terms of powering your hardware. As I see it, considering the fact that you're going to have a quad core, two video cards, and a lot of ram, I figure that a high-rated power supply is probably correct. Wouldn't surprise me if what you end up with is something around the numbers you've given. It's good to see that the dude is going to test things out for you and see what you need, regardless.

You'll have to let us know how it works out. I've got a dual-core AMD, fairly-high-end graphics card, and 2 gigs (got a free gig today, lol!) of DDR2 RAM, and nothing is really able to slow me down too badly, so I can imagine you're going to be having a good time. lol BTW, do you know what types of hard drives you're going to be getting? HDD bottlenecks can leave a lot of power unusable, and is a bad time.

I'm glad to see that you've got a USE for a powerful computer. It alwayd irks me when people buy high end computers so they can check their email. :-\ For this reason, I'm sure you can see why I got a good chuckle when I read your specs and you were asking about word processing software. :-))
 
Thats alkot of power every year I get a new pc I want to totaly overhaul my core dou 1.6 ghz 1 gig of ram in a few monthes.
 
  • #10
The primary advantage of Word and its siblings is that just about everyone uses them. Word also has a much more user friendly thesaurus than WordPerfect. WordPerfect's advantage comes from [Alt][F3], which is "reveal codes". But if you're the kind of writer that gets it right the first time and doesn't do much formatting and editing, it isn't that beneficial. On the other hand, I format and move things around a lot and the ability to see those codes is awfully helpful in repairing the collateral damage of cutting & pasting. I use Word at work, because that's what we have, but I bought WordPerfect for home.

I think the gap between Word & WordPerfect has narrowed considerably since WordPerfect's peak in the 1990s. I need the codes but I'd otherwise be drawn to the Microsoft package. WordPerfect's Presentation isn't completely compatible with Microsoft's Power Point. I've created slide shows in Presentation and saved them as Power Point files, yet they were totally screwed up when I tried to show them somewhere that used Power Point. That really sucked. I didn't pay for a database, so don't know how WordPerfect Office's version compares to Access. But it's probably much easier to find someone to help you figure out Access. Excel and WordPerfect Office's Quatro seem completely interchangeable.
 
  • #11
Just spend a lot of time on the computer and you'll be typing 60 words per minute in no time! Or like 4 years.

4 gigs is an unnecessary amount of RAM right now. I've got 2 gigs and have yet to see any sort of laggage besides from my video card, but that is not related to RAM. I would not recommend getting 8 gigs for a VERY long time. It's just a waste of money on unneeded power.
 
  • #12
4 gigs is an unnecessary amount of RAM right now. I've got 2 gigs and have yet to see any sort of laggage besides from my video card, but that is not related to RAM. I would not recommend getting 8 gigs for a VERY long time. It's just a waste of money on unneeded power.

In general, yes. If this were just for word processing and email and even gaming, this would be much more than strictly needed for anything. However, when we're talking about video / image editing and the like (as it appears we are in this case,) there is no real "too much."
 
  • #13
Just spend a lot of time on the computer and you'll be typing 60 words per minute in no time! Or like 4 years.

4 gigs is an unnecessary amount of RAM right now. I've got 2 gigs and have yet to see any sort of laggage besides from my video card, but that is not related to RAM. I would not recommend getting 8 gigs for a VERY long time. It's just a waste of money on unneeded power.


I think you missunderstood the question. He is looking for a word-procesor program, not a typing tutor. Also, Swords is an artist, I expect that he will be doing quite a bit more than playing video games, balancing his checkbook, or visiting TerraForums... In his case there really is no such thing as "too much".

As for the original question, I have both Wordpad and WordPerfect. Both of them work well enough for my needs, but I do not really do a lot of writing. One drawback, and I don't know if I just have not located the right button to do this, is there seems to be no way to alphabetize a long list. Several months ago I decided that it was time to create a list of all of my DVD collection. I was about 100 titles into the list when I realized that I could not alphabetize them with the program.. thus began the tedious process of cutting and pasting the titles into the proper locations and then inserting the remaining 300 or so titles into their locations individually.

Cheers
Steve
 
  • #14
Wow thanks for all the replies folks!

I'll never be doing 60 words a minute, I've been typing/doing layouts on the PC for 15 years doing metal magazines and I still hunt & peck! :-D

I'm gonna be doing music recording & digital art on this new PC but still gotta type stuff up sometimes or have a short charachter history to work out to help me visualize a sculpture or picture. I never knew about the alphabetize function of MSWord, I'll have to see if my old version here has that, as alphabetizing my record collection is a chore I hate to do. I gotta start reading more manuals...!

Does anyone here have a drawing tablet/digitizer to do painting and art with photoshop, Bryce, Lightwave 3D and such? I'm planning on ordering the Wacom Intuos3 6" x 8" model digital paintbrush/pen & tablet. My painting program manual says it can use any tablet/digitizer as long as it has a Win Tab Driver. Does this simply mean a Driver for running a Tablet under Windows? The Wacom.com site has drivers for all the windows operating systems but nothing called "Win Tab" exactly, is that just a general name for the type of file?
 
  • #15
4 GB does seem like a bit much.

A good place to practice typing on the web is www.typeonline.co.luk

I was never aware anything below 100 WPM was uncommon. I typed 90 WPM at age 10 and now 110 WPM at age 13 using a standard QWERTY keyboard.
 
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