One of the things I do like about working, is that I get to play with all kinds of gadgets a normal "teenager’s" budget would never allow. (I’m not really a teenager, but still.) Right now, for instance, I received four external USB2 HDDs, one mini-tower of about 300GB and three handheld versions with around 80GB of storage.
Ironically, I have at home only outdated ware. I sit on an ancient laptop running Puppy Linux most of the time, since windows XP is too hard to handle. No flatscreen, only a 21 inches CRT screen, also hard to handle. I’m still running Linux through live-cds, though, since I don’t have the time to install it properly, and really I doubt it would go any faster. With Puppy linux (specifically NaNoWriMo Linux) I’ve got a 256MB file in the C: directory I can store to from Linux.
In addition to having a fast, reliable OS, it gives me the opportunity to get to know "the linux commands" during idle time.
I’ve also found Open Office (v. 1.3) too slow on my old P450Mhz. I end up using notepad, most of the time.
Abiword through Linux, then, is great.
For those of you with no kind of interest in these technicalities, I must remind you that this is what I work with, that even though I’m a student of philosophy (or in some way related to those kinds of people) I have a job as a consultant where I mostly run around fixing printer errors.
And then there’s all the coffee.
