Mellel is the best academic writing tool for any platform, it's steady development and extensive features make it an absolute must for anyone writing for academia. I've had professors who swear by Word or WordPerfect, yet compared to my fellow students who use those tools I have never been marked off for formatting mistakes since I started using Mellel, it makes getting your presentation perfect easy and consistent, so you can focus on your writing instead of your formatting.

Hi All,
Could someone who has used both please comment on Mellel v Adobe InDesign? My wife is writing a book & I'd like to migrate her away from Word to something more book-aware. InDesign is certainly rock solid; however, there's a bit of a learning curve & I was wondering if Mellel might be an easier alternative.
Thanks & best,
Eric

One issue with Mellel has been the somewhat steep learning curve. Today they have a PDF manual that's over 300 pages long (with illustrations so don't feel overwhelmed), Help, and more recently a YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/MellelRedlex

It is perfectly possible to begin using Mellel even without the need to access any help. For some things, Mellel is not intuitive so the help is welcome.

I don't recall Mellel crashing on me. I bought my first copy in 2005, but have used other processors more often, mainly Word which I actually really like, plus it worked better in terms of compatibility, comments, tracking changes, etc.

Another one I use is Nisus Writer Pro. Unfortunately version 1 was very buggy. For me it was impossible to work with tables in NWP, and it crashed from time to time. Mellel has been very stable in contrast. Plenty of bugs were fixed for NWP 2, but at $50 for an upgrade I decided to pass.

This brings another attractive point in Mellel; price. The current price -unless anything changes- is $29 and includes free updates for life. I bought a second copy of Mellel in 2008 as part of a bundle, and turns out that I also have those free updates for life.

Mellel may be frustrating for some people. For example, I tried to change the page setup from Portrait to Landscape via File>Page Setup. It did not work.
A few seconds later I went to the Page Palette, selected margins and orientation at the bottom of the Palette, and once there with one click I changed the page orientation. As I said, not intuitive, but it was easily solved.

I do like NWP, and version 2 fixed a lot of the previous bugs (which were left for version 1 users). To me it was not worth $79 initially plus a $49 upgrade fee. In contrast, I was ready and willing to pay for this Mellel update, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was free. For those willing to deal with a learning curve, Mellel can be very rewarding. In this financially-challenging times, Mellel is a bargain. Launches fast, is stable, has many powerful features, and it's easy to write simple documents without any help. For more sophisticated documents even watching a 10 minute video can yield great results.

After one year with Mellel I really think that it's the BEST word processor!

I probably should have given it one star because it is stable. I went looking for a word processor because my Appleworks 6 is slow buggy on OSx 10/6 on my new MacBook Pro. Bean does not have headers or footers. I asked the developer at Bean to put that into his program two years ago. He has not, and that is his decision, I appreciate his judgment call. Bean does open up files that others do not such as docx. I like Bean for quick notes and non-professional work. Now to Mellel. I have been a macuser for over twenty years. I do know my way around programs some, I am not a professional software developer or even a guy who learns each aspect of the programs I use. I guess you could say I have been an average user with experience so far as word processing. First, Mellel is nowhere as intuitive as the other programs: If I cut and past a document into the program and the text has underlining in blue and the text is in black, just try to change the underline to black. I have successfully done it five times at least and each time I have had to struggle with relearning how to do it and then when I do accomplish it, it does take longer sometimes than others. It doesn't always "take." Weird. So far as making an underline bolder, that never workout easily either. I could not make the line bolder. In other programs this is simple. I do like the way it spell checks. The controls are just not setup intuitively. It takes so much longer than any other (six other) word processing program to learn and somethings I never learned. You may as plan on never using another program or transferring your files to another format because you cannot. Once saved in Mellel you are stuck with there format. Forget about transferring you file to another mac user or pc user who does not have Mellel. Try to save as in Mellel and you get no options. This is outrageous. All and I mean ALLLLLLLLL other programs have and do allow you to save to rtf. If I am wrong about this, then someone please tell me because I have looked for an hour over numerous time to find this. Ridiculous. Also, when you want to edit it pulls up these windows on the side that are not intuitive. This takes up valuable screen space. It has very little above the document. Like every other WP. One of these modules is where you can change the underlining. The way you set the tabs is not easy and I have to take my magnifying glass out to accomplish this and even when I do that I can't see where it is being placed (right on the inch mark) because my pointer is in the way. If you plan on using Mellel plan on using it for the rest of your life, because that appears how long you will have to learn it (if you are over 60). Also, plan on using it the rest of your life because the files you create, unless you want to cut and paste, will be stuck in their proprietary format and so are you. Go with OpenOffice.org instead, which is intuitive and easy. Version 3.3.0 just came out. Get bean for simple stuff and opening up docx. It will blow you away what OpenOffice can open up and save to (except docx). Both these are intuitive and consistent with Microsoft office products. OpenOffice has spreadsheet and six other programs. I will be selling my Mellel cheap after I transfer the last six months of files back over to rtf format. Good bye Mellel world, hello the rest of the world.

previous version crashed on launch with snow leopard. downloaded 2.7. Also crashes on launch. anybody else experiencing this?