Bean 3.0.9 user reviews

I mistakenly clicked on a 3 star rating, so this review is to make up for it.

With so many text editors out there, it amazes me how little there is in the big empty space between, say, emacs, latex(ian) and libreoffice. I used to resort to textedit for regular documents - now bean completely and elegantly fills that huge gap for me!
Many thanks to the developer.

Somewhere along the line, the distinction between word processing and desktop publishing got so blurred that people started expecting a word processor to include every gizmo imaginable. The result was behemoths like MS Word and OOo Writer. They're capable, yes, but overkill in the extreme.

Bean is old school, and I hope that doesn't sound like criticism, because I mean that in a positive way. It's streamlined, fast, and one gets to concentrate on writing instead of navigating the software. Bean is basic, but I don't think it's a stretch to say it is capable of everything most people need most of the time.

If you like to measure your self-worth or "professionalism" by the cost and complexity of the software you use, Bean won't appeal to you. If, however, you know the difference between the task at hand and the tools used to accomplish it, you will appreciate Bean.

've been hunting for something like this ever since I decided almost ten years ago that I wasn't prepared to keep paying Uncle Bill exorbitant sums for EvilEmpire Office. I used Mariner's word processor and spreadsheet for a long time, but the company seems to have lost interest in them: upgrades promised years ago have never materialised. I dabbled with most of the other Mac word processors but they all seemed too fiddly or too expensive for what they offered. I now use NeoOffice for heavy duty stuff - and I'm very pleased with it in most respects - but it is something of a sledgehammer/nut relationship for basic word processing.

Bean is exactly right: the developer, James Hoover, says it's a niche product, but it's a very big niche: I guess that 90 percent of folks would find that it satisfied 90 percent of their word processing needs. It works well, it's fast, it uses standard formats, it looks good - what more could you ask for?