Jon, you are starting to sound like me with the Brother MFP. Finally, I just had to say, "If they like them, they like them." The letter writer (in general to be fair), was 5th out of 81 on the poll. Again, not "letter writer should be in Word," but it needs to be better. I am missing the "read only" meaning.
There are so many more things you can do with Word. I think many of us wouldn't care if it didn't save to HTML.
WordPad? I can't even find that. (OK, on accessories -- but there is a reason it is called accessories). Travis, forgive me, but I can't use RAM as an excuse. And, I certainly don't feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have an Office Suite on their PC whether it is Microsoft Office or Open Office. (Free)
To say that we shouldn't use Word, because some people don't have it, would be akin to saying that the program doesn't need to print because some people don't have printers.
The whole idea is that it will open in whatever editor you have. If not Word, then it likely would open in WordPad.
The letter writer is embarrassing. There are users that have left AC over the letter writer. Why should we have PDF. We can just convert a word document to HTML or Notepad.