Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: We Make DIY Upgrading Easy! Maximize your Apple MacBook / MacBook Pro. Up to 8.0GB Memory, up to 1.0TB HD & More. Easy Guide + Free, Detailed Installation Videos. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

The Review Vault

iText: Solid, Lightweight, Free Word Processing for the Classic Mac OS, OS X, and Windows

- 2007.08.03

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

For quite sometime, I was searching for one word processor that would work on System 7 as well as OS X. I should also mention that I wanted this to be of the freeware persuasion.

Why only one word processor, you ask? I didn't want to get caught up in the game of translation tag.

We've all played the game at some point. You write something in one word processor, then try to convert it over to another word processor, and bang, it fails or severely messes up the formatting. I'm happy to say I've finally found a word processor that meets these requirements - and quite nicely at that.

iText from Michiaki Yamashita is a pleasure to use. It has enough basic features to make it extremely useful, and it can be upgraded to iTextPro for a small fee, giving you even more advanced features.

iText is very user-friendly and well laid-out. But the lure of it for me was the fact it covers a wide span of Mac OSes. iText works with any Macintosh that runs System 7.1 on up through "Tiger" (OS X 10.4). I've used iText on my Classic II, transferred the file to floppy, copied it over to my Mac mini with nary a problem!

iText can import and export RTF (Rich-Text Format) files. Not only does it cover the Mac side, it covers the Windows side as well. iText runs on Windows 95 and up. It's a great, free way to ensure your documents will come out as expected without having to play translation tag.

iText on Mac OS X
iText on Mac OS X

Other iText Programs

There are also other products he offers on his website. The layout of the site could be better, as it gets confusing knowing what to look for. Let me break it down for you - here what he offers:

iText is the flagship product. It's free and has versions for Classic Mac OS, OS X, and Windows 95 through XP. Then there's iTextPro, which expands upon iText by adding more features. iTextPro is shareware ($15), and there isn't a Windows version. You can purchase a key and enter it into iText to turn it into iTextPro.

Then there's LightWayText. It also runs on Classic Mac OS, OS X, and Windows. It's on the same playing field as Word. It's shareware ($15). I should also mention that when you pay the $15 shareware fee, it covers all versions and updates for life. That's a heck of a deal!

A new product that's only available on the Mac is iTextExpress. iTextExpress is only available for OS X users, limited to Panther (10.3) and Tiger (10.4), whereas iText, iTextPro and LightWayText can run on Puma (10.1) up through Tiger.

iTextExpress is essentially a light word processor that's a little step above TextEdit in OS X. iTextExpress is freeware.

The programs are all cross-compatible with each other.

Solid, Lightweight Software

The programs are superbly robust. They don't eat up hard drive space. They pack a heavy punch in a light package. In the case of iText for Classic Mac OS, iText only takes up a little over 2 MB of hard drive space, and it's light on it's memory usage. On my Classic II, which has 4 MB of RAM, it uses a little over 2 MB with virtual memory turned off. While it's not the lightest, it's by no means a hog.

iText for the Classic Mac OS
iText for the Classic Mac OS

Since I've begun using my recently acquired eMate 300 for writing, I've exported everything from NewtonWorks to my Classic II. iText is the only word processor that doesn't screw up the articles I've written.

The only negative thing I've found with iText is that it isn't Universal binary. Load times on an Intel Mac can be somewhat painful without a RAM upgrade, especially if you have 512 MB or less. But this is petty in the scheme of it all.

I cannot recommend iText enough. Check out the website to learn more about what each program features. Whether your flavor is Classic or OS X on the Mac side - or Windows 95 on up to XP - you'll like what iText brings to the table. It's a stable, easy-to-use, lightweight, yet full-featured word processor that will do the job nicely!

Drop me a line at thomas (at) lowendmac (dot) com and let me know what you think of iText. LEM

Link: iText

Go to the Welcome to Macintosh review index.

Recent articles in The Review Vault

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

This article copyright ©2007 by Tommy Thomas. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.