WordPerfect Now Available for Free (Sort Of)

WordPerfect... now there's a name you don't see very much, unless you run across it while you're uninstalling the preloaded junk that came on your new PC. Well, if you didn't get WordPerfect for free with your computer, now you can get a newfangled version of it for, um, free... whether you're buying a new PC or not.

The full WordPerfect Office suite normally costs up to $350 depending on the version you buy. The new product, WordPerfect Lightning, is a significant departure from the tired and true version of WordPerfect. (Download it here, but be warned, you need to create a free account on Corel.com before it will let you at the download file.) The product is obviously a response to the webification of apps like Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Nowadays, everyone's headed to the web with their apps. Adobe lets you edit videos online (if you're a Photobucket Pro user) and today announced an online version of Photoshop, due for release within six months.

I have not used Lightning extensively, but download the program and you'll soon see there's not a whole lot to it. The word processor portion (Lightning Notes) is pretty bare bones, akin to WordPad on any Windows system. But Lightning offers some curious features that extend it beyond your usual piece of software. For example, you don't actually save documents: They're saved automatically whenever they are created or edited, and Lightning includes a built-in organizer system (like Windows Explorer) to help you find and organize all these files (the idea being it's much easier to find and reuse snippets of data). Additional tools let you share files online and store them on the web.

If you want to do anything fancy, you'll still need a bigger word processor, but Lightning is fine for small jobs and its web features could be quite interesting if you're part of a group that often works on the same documents.

Give it a spin. After all, it don't cost nothin'.