T wrote:

Carlos E.R. wrote:

I'm looking for a simple free (or gratis) program to replace Word. Me, I
use LibreOffice without a doubt, but it is not for me. I need something
simple, that ideally saves in word 97-2003 format by default, so that
the user doesn't have to think.

I was considering AbiWord, but to my dismay it has abandoned the Windows
version for lack of volunteers.

Are there other possibilities I should consider?

If I'm not mistaken, Word comes with the full Office suite; I know two
versions: one that you pay once about 200¤ and keep, with no upgrades,
another called Office 365 that is a yearly subscription, and I think I
heard about a gratis version, perhaps online inside a browser. Is this
correct? If that is so, perhaps I should suggest my friend to use that
online version and not spend an euro.

Free Office:
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/download/applications

It is the previous edition of Softmaker

Go into settings and set the default to word.

It runs really well in Linux and loads my Libre Office
files literally 10 times faster than does Libre Office.

I just looked at their comparison page. While they have 64-bit versions
for Mac and Linux, they only have a 32-bit version for their freeware
version. That doesn't mean the 32-bit version is slower. It does mean
you can't open documents bigger than 4 GB; however, a document that size
is obvious way too huge for personal use which is what the freeware
version is geared for usage. I supposed if you got nuts with attaching
lots of photos (making your document really a photo gallery) that you
could run out of space.

The subscriptionware version at $30/year and the perpetual license at
$80 are definitely a lot cheaper than Microsoft's 365 package, but with
Office 365 you also get 1 TB of OneDrive storage along with 60
minutes/month of SkypeOut). I've only, so far, consumed 3 GB of my 15
GB OneDrive quota (5 GB default + 10 GB loyalty bonus). If I needed
more than that, getting 1 TB of OneDrive quota includes Office 365.
I've tried Google Drive (now Google Backup & Restore), but found their
client conflicts with OneDrive: when both are trying to sync the same
file to online storage, Google Drive errors but OneDrive succeeds.

Softmaker's FreeOffice is good, but Softmaker's Office payware is
definitely far more comparable to Office 365 (minus the online perks of
365). FreeOffice is faster to load documents than LibreOffice, but
LibreOffice is more comparable to Office 365 (minus the offline perks),
and is free like FreeOffice. If LibreOffice got rid of the banners (to
announce it is loading), document load times would get shorter. Whether
you notice LibreOffice is slower than FreeOffice depends a lot on what
you have for hardware. With an m.2 NVMe 1GB SSD, I'm not sure I would
see a difference in doc load time between LibreOffice and FreeOffice.
Without any noticeable different in doc load times, for me, I don't feel
any impetus to pay for Softmaker's Office payware to get nearly the same
feature set as LibreOffice. With a slow desktop or laptop, yeah, you
might see LibreOffice is slower than Softmaker's FreeOffice or Office.

This is regarding personal use. If the office suite is used in a
business scenario, and unless you have a good friend that is a computer
guru and only asks for a beer in return for their help, most businesses
should be geared to getting support for the software they employ, so
buying the software is almost a given. You don't suffer your business
operations because you went cheap on support. Between freeware
LibreOffice and payware Softmaker Office, both are nearly equal in
features, but for business use you get support with Softmaker and are
own your own with LibreOffice. If support is a non-issue, why pay for
Softmaker when you can get LibreOffice for free? With freeware as the
only choice (which very likely means for personal use, not critical
business use), why go with the lesser featured FreeOffice than go with
more featured LibreOffice?

Does the OP need the most compatibility in feature sets between
Microsoft Office and the alternative candidates? If so, FreeOffice is
not a choice, and only Softmaker Office and LibreOffice are candidates.

If not in a business deployment where support can be critical to prevent
suffering business impact, support is important, and that costs money.
LibreOffice doesn't have support. Yes, there are user communities, like
here, but that is not the same as business-level support. LibreOffice
is not a candidate alternative to MS Office if support is important
unless you're willing to save on support costs by doing it yourself.

There are lots of decision factors that were not presented by the OP.
Is freeware the only option? If payware is acceptable, what is the
budget for the product? What is the budget for support? Is Office, and
its alternative, for personal or business use?