I love a guy who thinks outside the box! Who in the world would have thought that people could - in some circumstances - actually welcome a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when a text editor was plain white text on a blue screen? In this time of a million toolbars, Drag and Drops, every damn thing in the world? Who'da thunk it?

So along comes Hog Bay Software and WriteRoom, which is just that - a plain, completely abstracted and non-distracting environment for basic text creation, and I'll be damned if it isn't very pleasant to use for some things. You can set up whatever color scheme you like, and there you are with that old-fashioned rectangular cursor and nothing but a blue (in my case) background in front of you. Nothing else competing for your attention.

This is really basic stuff, and of course it is not going to run Word or Pages off your desktop. We do all our promo and page layout stuff in Pages, and I love it like a brother. But it IS going to knock TextEdit back a few steps! Word has been gone for months on our systems, at least - who would figure such a completely other end experience as WriteRoom would find a spot?

Very cool application, and a quick trip back to the Seventies - if not the Sixties, for that matter - for me on small things.

Mac OS X only, but I wouldn't be surprised if a Windows alternative might not have sprung up out there as well. If not, there's always that old PC Jr in the back of the closet under the basement stairs!