Jarte

If you want to write text and you want to stick with Microsoft products, there are two options at your disposal: you could use the free WordPad text editor, or you could pay for a license and get Microsoft Word. But if you’re willing to look for other developers, you could come across properly good and free alternatives, such as the Carolina Road Software-developed Jarte, a word processor that takes WordPad’s functionality to the next level.

2.9MB is the size of the Jarte download, meaning that in no time at all you will be done with the download. The same can be said about installing Jarte on your PC. A setup wizard will guide you through the whole process. Jarte provides support for 32 and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. It works with older Windows versions as well, but there’s no support for these older versions.

Anyone who has ever used a text editor or word processor before should immediately feel at home using Jarte. By default the interface is set to the “Compact Layout.” If that layout is not to your liking, there are two other layouts to choose from: Minimal Layout (makes the interface look very similar to Notepad) and Classic Layout (expands the Compact Layout). On top of that, you can customize the interface by changing the background image.

You can use Jarte to open RTF, DOC and DOCX files or you can create a new document. This means that you can write down anything you want, edit the text by choosing the font, font color, font size, underlining and highlighting the font, adding an image to accompany the font, and so on. All the functionality you would expect to get from a word processor, Jarte has it, including a spell checker and a word counter.

The bottom line is that Jarte is free, easy to use, and a properly good word processor. If you don’t want to spend money on Word and you’re not satisfied with WordPad, give Jarte a try.