It is relatively slow, but not too slow for a deliberate, reflective writer. Still, marking a block of text to move, copy, or erase can be tedious. The spelling checker sometimes stops on correctly spelled words, but this problem sends students to a printed dictionary and may make them feel good about outsmarting a machine. First, I am teaching writing, not word processing. There are no dense menus or cryptic command lines to puzzle beginners.
Students gain control of the whole program in a short time.
A student may be away from the computer for months or years and still be able to come back to write a paper almost immediately. It really is a word-processing program for almost everyone. Marlys Styne teaches at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, Illinois. Both versions not copy protected.