Does Vista come with notepad or word.doc ?

Do you mean WordPad? If so, then yes. Vista includes both Notepad and WordPad.

Question: Why is Notepad spelled with a lower-case 'p' while WordPad is spelled with a capital 'P'?

As far as I'm aware, most new systems don't come with Microsoft Word or Microsoft Office. You have to purchase the software separately, which is a huge bummer, I know. To answer the question specifically: No, Vista does not include Microsoft Word or Office as part of the pre-installed software.

RL: I would guess it's because "notepad" is an actual word, whereas "WordPad" hasn't achieved that status; it's just a compound masquerading as a word to be a clever program name.

Sara

Did WordPad ever get spell check added?

Sara, you're right. No system will come with Microsoft Word or Office for free. Office is a $400+ package. The only time I've ever seen Office included is as part of a bundle. If you buy a system, you can also get Office for a couple hundred bucks.

Some systems may come with a trial version. But they won't work after a short time.

Some systems may come with the cheaper Microsoft Works.

My rec here would be Notetab Pro. It's a text editor, not WYSIWYG, but perfect for creating text files for the boards, and has a lot of useful features for creating web pages etc. There's a free version that doesn't have a spell checker, you can upgrade to the version with the checker for $19.95, or a deluxe multilingual version for $29.95

One of the features I use a lot is that you can have a load of documents open simultaneously - for example, each of the chapters of a book as a separate file - and do global or all-documents search and replace.

If what you want is an all-singing all-dancing program equivalent to Word, however, your best bet is probably the Openoffice suite, which is free and very good.

http://www.openoffice.org

Have any of you tried Word Works I just got a new laptop today and when I was at best buy the sales rep typed that up.