Word processing for Windows (and MAC)

I love Microsoft's Office 2003 -- I think that every version since then has added crap that is not needed for writing and the later user interfaces just get in the way of the words. I can type -- I do not like having to lift my hands off the keyboard, find the mouse, wiggle it until I see where the cursor is located and perform the action I need. Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man points to two applications that look really promising:

In praise of Jarte
You've never heard of Jarte? Neither had I, until this morning. It's an excellent (and free!) word processor for Windows, very small and compact, built on Microsoft's Wordpad kernel. It's garnered very good reviews from PC World, Gizmo, and users.

I came across it while looking for a text editor that would strip out all word processor formatting codes, including hidden ones, from the manuscripts for my first two novels. Miss D. and I have decided to format them for publication using Scrivener, a program that Marko enthusiastically recommends (and which he used to format his recently-published first novel). We've been playing with an evaluation copy for some time, and like it. Unfortunately, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice and many other word processors insert all sorts of extraneous code into one's documents. You can't see it with the naked eye, but it's there, and it can screw up formatting in other software - including Scrivener - like you wouldn't believe!

Scrivner is also available for MAC -- these apps look really interesting. Two downloads are in process...