With word processing applications there are two types. Those that are too big and full of stuff you’ll never use, and those that are so minimal that most people can’t work with them.

In the “too much” department, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and Lotus Symphony come to mind. These are all full suites.

In the “not enough” department there is Google Docs, Dark Room, WriteRoom, AbiWord and a few others.

Then there’s Jarte. This word processor utilizes the existing WordPad engine in Windows, yet adds a whole bunch of stuff that makes this a truly good program to write things in.

Jarte to most people will look ugly and the interface may throw you off. However once you start actually using it, you’ll find that the way things are laid out are done in a way that makes sense. For example, Jarte has tabs. Tabs? Yes! And they work great. Jarte makes it super-easy to insert special characters like ä or é. Jarte will open both DOC and DOCX (the newer MS Office 2007 format). Jarte will export HTML and/or PDF. This software has it where it counts.

Best of all, Jarte is super-light. The installation file is a tiny 5MB, launches faster than your Word or OpenOffice ever will, and has a feature set which falls into the “just right” department.

Jarte is not a replacement for MS Word or OO Writer. Not by a long shot. But heck, a 5MB feature-rich word processor that will run local or USB stick and uses an existing engine for lightning-fast operation? That’s tough to beat.

Jarte will work on versions of Windows from 95 all the way to 7. How’s that for compatibility?

See video below for details and visit www.jarte.com to download and try it for yourself.

It was only a matter of time, but Intel has brought out the big guns and now has quad-core available for laptops. Five of them, to be exact.

Surprisingly, it won’t be that expensive. According to the article linked above, you can score an Acer Aspire laptop with an 18.4-inch screen (that’s frappin’ huge for a laptop) for $1,799. Not bad considering the horsepower that’s under the hood. However bear in mind it’s being billed as a gaming rig.

And what about the Macbooks? Oh, trust me, Intel will make their quad-core presence(s) in them soon enough, not to worry.

I estimate that more reasonably-sized laptops will get quad-core (i.e. 15 to 17-inch screens) in the 3rd quarter of ‘09 or possibly sooner.

I don’t know about you, but even with the power-extreme of quad-core in a laptop, an 18-inch screen is just too much. The unit isn’t exactly all that portable at that point.

For those that ask "What about heat?", bear in mind these are mobile processors we’re talking about, so the heat should be kept in check. What matters more is whether the manufacturer has designed a laptop chassis well enough to spread the heat evenly to avoid any nasty meltdowns.

One thing is for certain: Quad-core is not going to go obsolete for quite some time – even given the rapid progress of the computer industry as a whole. It is a purchase that should stay current for at least a good 3 to 4 years (assuming the laptop lasts that long).

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be looking at something everyone has in their computer, a Central Processing Unit, better known by its abbreviation as the CPU.

In the last article written about this on PCMech (which was a really long time ago), microprocessors were discussed up to the 386, so we’ll start from the 486 to present.

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