which Word? (was Re: 64 or 32 bit Win 7)

[Raphael Tennenbaum rtennenbaum@xxxxxxxx]

Paul Lagasse wrote:
> .... And I'm really only ever
> forced to use Windows when someone must have a Word file submitted or
> when I use Turbotax.
>
> Paul Lagasse
this brings to mind a question: what flavor Word do people use? I just
checked, and I am still on Word 97 -- which theoretically means I am
missing something. or, am I? if someone receives a .doc file from me
that I've edited in a 13-year-old version of Word, is there anything on
the document that marks me as stingy, anachronistic reprobate?
truly I am so stubborn and cheap I constantly have to fight the urge to
simply use OpenOffice exclusively and save to Word 97 format. I would
do just that, if I hadn't noticed problems -- not so much in documents
I've created in OpenOffice, rather in things that have gone back and
forth between Word 97 and OO -- font and bulleted-list oddities

so, generally speaking, my preference is:

1) text in the e-mail, copied out of XyWrite
2) PDF if I don't expect it to be edited
3) Word 97, with an implicit pretense that many of my friends &
associates don't have the latest version.
do the latest versions of Word save in a genuinely
universally-recognized XML format? does anyone know whether it is
possible to use OpenOffice (which by the way last I looked is free for
the Windows platform as well) to save in XML and for someone using Word
2010 or whatever it's called, be none the wiser?

-rafe