Generally speaking, writers don’t have a lot of money. When you dedicate your life to the creative arts, an endeavor that yields very little in the way of compensation, you tend to be broke. This can prove to be an obstacle when you, say, want to write in a decent word processor on your computer. Most people are familiar with Microsoft Office, the standard for all things word processing and spreadsheet. But unless you’re lucky enough to be a student, the standard Microsoft Office suite will run you $399.95 (students pay $149.95). That is a lot of money for a person who, if providence shines on them that day, could make $20 from a short story published in a journal.

Over the past 15 years we have been indoctrinated to think that Microsoft is the only name in computers, and we’ve also come to accept that Office is only name in desktop productivity. True, many people who request your writing be sent to them will ask it to be emailed in Word’s ubiquitous .DOC file format. It’s like you can’t get away from spending $399.95 on a couple of programs that do very basic things.

But you don’t have to spend any money at all. You can download OpenOffice for free.

OpenOffice is both a productivity software suite and an open-source project, dating back to October 13, 2000. Open-source, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, means that the source code (the programming behind the software) is open for anybody to view or alter. But the open-source ideal is larger than that. Open-source projects have communities that surround them, many people involved in the design, development, and distribution. These people, often industry professionals, lend their talents and time to these projects for free and offer their work to you free of charge. This isn’t just about a free lunch; it’s about freedom of information. For a project to truly be considered open-source, it must adhere to the Open-Source Definition outlined by the Open-Source Initiative. Surely, this is a lot to absorb at first for someone who thinks that paying hundreds of dollars for software is business-as-usual. But just because something distributed by Microsoft is the industry standard, that doesn’t mean it has to be your standard as well.

Another, even larger, open-source project that might be of interest to you is the Linux operating system. Rather than using Windows, or even Mac OS X for that matter, you could be using a free operating system that will render you essentially insusceptible to viruses and various exploits. Just today it was announced that Windows, and Word and Excel specifically, are open to a new exploit through fonts of your computer; if someone sends you a nefarious .DOC or .XLS, or you view a website with Internet Explorer and someone has embedded a hacked font, your computer could be compromised. The beauty about open-source projects like Linux, which are generally immune to viruses via both programmer care and software obscurity, is that they can work on your computer right now as it is. I won’t get as deep into it as I would like in this article, but I highly suggest looking into Ubuntu Linux and the strides that particular project has made.

But what about OpenOffice, the topic of this article; how does OpenOffice stack up to Microsoft Office? I admit, there will be a learning curve for you. Not everything will be in the exact place you might remember it. But the key ingredient to the usage of OpenOffice is that, while it default saves to its own file format, you can also save your file in Word’s .DOC file format. That’s right, you can, for free, write in a word processor and save your work in the .DOC format. OpenOffice also has other software comparable to Microsoft Office, apart from Writer (their version of Word), including Calc (Excel), Impress (PowerPoint), and Base (Access). And, even better, OpenOffice works on Windows, OS X, and Linux. You can download and use it right now.

So if you’ve been on the fence about upgrading to the newest Microsoft Office, or buying Office for the very first time, give OpenOffice a try first. It will save you hundreds of dollars, give you a more secure machine, and make you part of a greater project meant to share information rather than control it.

It’s no secret that I’m a technophile. While I am completely book-obsessed, and particularly interested in keeping books printed on paper (I do so love holding a book in my hand), I am also a huge nerd when it comes to technology. To give you an example, my television is connected to a media computer that I built myself and it runs Ubuntu Linux as its operating system; if you know not what that means, just rest assured that it’s pretty deeply immersed in the nerd-realm. I have been playing with the entrails of computers ever since my high school computer programming class had to build our computer lab out of outcast parts of machines that were already presumed dead. The end result: QBASIC and Pascal programming on 386s running Windows 3.1. Fast forward to today: I know computers pretty well.

But I decided to follow the path of a writer. Such is life.

For writing, I use my laptop — an Apple MacBook. About two years back I purchased the white model and while I was happy with my purchase, I wanted a little more from it. Over time, the white top case and keyboard became discolored and refused all methods of cleaning. Add to that the top case had a defect, as many of the MacBooks did, and cracked around the area where my right palm would rest. After buying and installing another white top case that again became discolored and cracked, I’d had enough. I wanted to trick out my typewriter.

Now it’s well known that writers have been tricking out their typewriters for years. Hemingway always painted racing stripes on the sides of his typewriters, and often added a sweet spoiler on the back to cut down wind resistance from his furious typing. I heard Faulkner had some sort of alcohol dispensing unit (think beer helmet at sporting events) on his typewriter. I’m stepping in the footprints of giants here.

What I wanted was my white MacBook to have a black interior. This is totally possible with my MacBook version; if you recall, Apple simultaneously released a black MacBook with the white one (and for some reason charged people $100 extra for the privilege of owning it). So what I did was I went online and through eBay I purchased a black screen bezel (that piece of plastic around the MacBook’s screen) and a black top case keyboard. I love taking apart computers, so doing this came easy to me. You can do it, too, and I suggest taking a peak at iFixIt for tutorials. You do want to be careful, though, as if your MacBook is still under warranty or AppleCare doing this may void these insurances. Most likely, if your MacBook is like mine, it’s long out of warranty.

But I wasn’t done there. Being the rugged individualist that I am, I wanted the little glowing apple on the reverse side of my screen to get some love too. So what do I do? Pop the screen out, of course, and poke around. The plastic apple on my MacBook version was covered with a white paint on its backside to aid in the white glow. I pulled the apple out of the shell, sanded off the white paint with fine grit sandpaper, and affixed red and green colored transparency paper to it. Reassemble it all, and look what you get: a tricked out, unique MacBook, that sets me apart (at least a little bit) from the overzealous hipster Apple fanclub. Hey, if I use this machine to get creative the machine itself might as well be creative too.

While I don’t have any pictures of the process, I do have some shots of what the MacBook looks like. The whole thing is pretty smart looking, if I do say so myself.