An Alternative to Word

After my rant yesterday about the NY Times writer who pimped an author's alternative to MS Word without mentioning it was a Mac-only application, I poked around last night to see if I could find a good Windows based one. To my surprise, there are lots of Mac-only applications. But there are a handful of Windows ones, one of which has the ultimate feature - it's free.

yWriter (now in it's 4th edition) was developed by Australian author Simon Haynes, it's small, quick (it can run on a USB key), and looks to have lots of cool features. It's based around a system where you compose scenes that become chapters and can later be easily rearranged. It provides an easy way to keep track of characters, locations, and things from scene to scene. It can import and export text in various formats. In short, it looks to be a very effective tool. And you can't beat the price.