Okay, this is just me being curious. I am an OpenOffice lover (though recently, due to a bad Windows Update on my brand new Acer Aspire One laptop, I have been forced to write on my 10 year old clunker of an emachine, which has some 2003 version of Microsoft Word). During my time being able to use OpenOffice, I loved it. I can't really say why, other than its simple layout and easy to use functionality (although being free didn't hurt any).

What I'd like to know is which Writing Software you guys like to use. Microsoft Word? OpenOffice? Some other software? C'mon and tell me. I'm curious.

I have MS Office 2007, with Word of course. I've used various incarnations of MS Word exclusively since 1997, until a few weeks ago when I downloaded a trial of Scrivener. 

After repeatedly using the Scrivener tutorial and playing with it, its features have finally begun to sink in. I purchased Scrivener a few days ago and haven't as much as given a thought to Word since.

After 17 yrs of being an MS Word user, I've abandoned it for Scrivener.

ChuckB,  Thank you for mentioning Scrivener (look a link!), it looks interesting and I'm going to try it out soon.  FYI it also has Mac & Linux versions.  The Linux version is considered a beta release, but it is there.  That was somewhat important for me since I don't have a doze computer.

--edited by nobody on 9/2/2014, 12:07 AM--

I've used both Open Office and Word. I like both-- but for very different reasons.

Word is versatile. Most of your publishing companies and editors will ask you to give them a doc or a docx. You can do this with Open Office, of course, but if you ever plan on formatting your own work, it is best to use Word because every publisher I've come across that allows you to self publish (here, Smashwords, KDP, Lulu) will give you formatting directions based on Word. So unless you like pulling out your hair-- just use Word when formatting

Open Office is nice because you can save a document in a variety of formats that you cannot do with Word. I have always enjoyed that feature, especially if I want RTF. RTF is great for making all your formatting mistakes disappear. It gives your piece a clean slate to work from. I also find it much easier to set margins in Open Office because the program seems a lot less complex.

However, if you ever plan to send documents off to someone else, be forewarned that they may not be able to open them in their Word program. Sometimes Open Office gets glitches in it and I had that experience a few times trying to send in my articles to my Editor in Chief before he put the paper to bed. I would have chalked that experience up to just being a one-time thing, but I also sadly had that problem at work with several documents too. 

I am a huge fan of Microsoft Office but I guess it might be a matter of habit.

People do not like changes in things they used to.