Mac Journal (2.6)

Rating: 4 (****)

Ever wish that you can have some kind of offline blog where you can easily and quickly write something in an organized way? well this one is for you. This application can be used to write any journal, which can be encrypted and password protected, and you can send your journal as email or post them to your blog. The 2.6 version has a limited support for blogging, with it you can upload your journal to a blog but not the other way around, it can't import existing blog contents yet. Currently supported blog engines are Live Journal and Blogger (and any other blog engine that implements the Blogger API, such as WordPress).

Pros:
- Write text in organized ways, just like paper and pencil journal
- Very intuitive

Cons:
- Limited support for blogging
- Newer version no longer free (shareware)
- Always tries to connect to .Mac (no preference to avoid it)

All of the reviews posted here were copied from my Mac Journal entries.

AbiWord (2.2.8)

Rating: 3 (***)

Abiword is a simple lightweight word processor. It has many feature like a standard word processor (styles, tables, spelling checker, etc), and is able to import and export many document format (Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Writer, etc).

Compared with Open Office, this Word Processor still has less compatibility with Microsoft Office. Sometimes the application crashed on large or complicated Ms Word documents.

Pros:
- Lightweight, fast start

Cons:
- Often crashes on large/complex document