Does MacBook Air come with word processing software?

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Level 1

2 points

Does MacBook Air come with word processing software?

I love how portable and light the MacBook Air looks and I'd like to buy one. The main things I will be using it for are: word processing, web, email.

1. Does the MacBook Air come with a word processing program of any sort?

2. If I were to install Microsoft Word onto the laptop, would it slow it down considerably? (Word is what I'm using now on my old laptop)

Paula

Posted on Jan 11, 2011 5:27 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

NA Smith

Level 2

345 points

Feb 7, 2011 9:45 AM in response to Writer1111

In addition to everything said here - OSX TextEdit has plain text (can be configured to act much like Notepad) and rich text. Another free & excellent OSX WP is "Bean". TextEdit and Bean will open MS Word files but not perfectly. To do this perfectly you will have to purchase MicroSoft Office for OSX (expensive unless your workplace offers you an employer version, then it is cheap like dirt). MS Office for a Mac works well but I found it disappointing that the bells and whistles don't LOOK like MS Office. You have to adjust a bit. One more thing - BootCamp in OSX allows you to install any copy of Windows that you own (and therefore MS Office). From your OSX side you can "drag" your Windows Word docs right into OSX and open them with any of the above mentioned word processors. To do so seamlessly you need MS Office for Mac, I'm afraid. Lots of options though! Good luck!

PS - Office for Mac will in no way slow down your machine. It does take about 30 seconds to load, though. But after that it's speedy.

Message was edited by: NA Smith

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Answer 2

Jan 11, 2011 9:54 AM in response to Writer1111

Writer1111 wrote:
I love how portable and light the MacBook Air looks and I'd like to buy one. The main things I will be using it for are: word processing, web, email.

1. Does the MacBook Air come with a word processing program of any sort?

2. If I were to install Microsoft Word onto the laptop, would it slow it down considerably? (Word is what I'm using now on my old laptop)

Paula

1) no but you can buy Pages from the mac App Store for $10. This is a better solution than Word for most users.

2) If your version of Word is recent (2008 or 2010) it won't slow down the MBA any more than is typical for Office. If you are running the older Office 2004 products you will see performance loss because of the Rosetta interpreter.

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Answer 3

Jan 11, 2011 1:16 PM in response to Writer1111

Hi Writer1111 and welcome to Apple Discussions!

Actually the MacBook Air does come with a word processing program. It is called TextEdit. It is a *very basic* WP application, but you did say "of any sort" so there's your answer.

Other WP applications that are free (for download from the Internet) are [OpenOffice|http://www.openoffice.org> and [NeoOffice|http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php].

Best of luck.

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Answer 4

Feb 8, 2011 8:00 PM in response to Writer1111

and don't forget about the UNIX applications you can use within /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app or an xterm inside /Applications/Utilities/X11.app:

The text editors /usr/bin/vi and /usr/bin/emacs both are already installed on your machine. For typesetting you can download LaTeX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
http://www.latex-project.org/
http://www.lyx.org/

and for text-based web browsing and e-mail, there's lynx and pine, these were great back in the day of dial-up internet over a 9600 BAUD modem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx%28webbrowser%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineemailclient

all great UNIX/BSD/GNU software and it's all FREE!

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Answer 5

dwb

Level 7

33,082 points

Nov 4, 2016 4:24 AM in response to Writer1111

Go to Macupdate.com and do a search on "word processor" and you'll find a huge number of them. I believe iWork (Pages, Numbers & Keynote) still come with the computer but you must download them from the App Store. Pages takes a bit of getting used to if you are a Word user but it is a decent basic word processor. Office is also available for the Mac and while it isn't the most nimble of word processors, I have no complaints about its performance on even my oldest and least powerful Mac - a 2011 MacBook Air. No it doesn't slow down the computer. If you'll need to share documents back and forth with other users, Word is probably your first choice.

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Answer 6

slyguy_28

Level 2

188 points

Feb 6, 2011 8:30 PM in response to Writer1111

I also do some light word processing and was interested in software also. I looked into Pages. Great program. A limited version of it Is available on the Mac App Store that will be included on your MBA for low cost. I wanted a larger variety of templates and features to choose from, so I bought iWork when I bought my 13"MBA. You get Keynote for presentations, Numbers for spreadsheets and Pages. It's $79 retail, but only $49 if you include it with your purchase and it can be installed for you or you can do it yourself by using the USB external SuperDrive CD-ROM drive.

Cheers...
Sly

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Answer 7

Nov 4, 2016 1:23 AM in response to Writer1111

Does Apple MacBook 13" come with word processor ?

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Answer 8

KC7GNM

Level 4

2,904 points

Feb 6, 2011 8:49 PM in response to Writer1111

Open office works great and will open up microsoft word, powerpoint, and excel files with no problem. The best thing it it is completely free and there is a Mac version you can download. Works great.

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