Windows 8 is the first version of Windows that doesn't usually ship with a free or very low cost word processing program.  

Microsoft discontinued Works in 2009, replacing it with Office Starter, an advertising based minimal version of Word and Excel.  Microsoft does not offer Office Starter with Windows 8, so now the casual user must either buy an expensive Office Suite or find an alternative.

If you are only a casual user of office software, and you don't need Outlook, I highly recommend trying LibreOffice before you make a commitment to buy Office 2013. Open source software, LibreOffice will do most of what the full Office Suite will do, at the very affordable price of free!  It will open and edit any Office document that is sent to you as an attachment, and includes Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Database and Graphics software.

On a completely different note, I want to relay a little story to you about customer service.  People often ask me what brand of computer I buy, and I tell them that, even though no manufacturer is perfect, I almost always stick with Dell. The reason I give is that Dell is a computer company, nothing else, and I like the way they support their customers.

A few months ago a regular client of mine asked me for some advice about buying a Windows 7 desktop for her aging mother, to replace an old XP system.  I recommended she buy from the Dell Outlet, purchasing a refurbished Windows 7 system with the same warranty as new.  She ordered the system right away, but it was a few months before she could get it to me with her mother's hard drive so I could do the data transfer and set things up properly.

Unfortunately, the system my client purchased from the Dell Outlet clearly had problems from the start.  It crashed on first boot and continued to crash every time I tried to work on it.  I called Dell and explained the situation to them.  They told me that Outlet systems come with a 15 day exchange guarantee, but that they would try to repair the system by replacing the hard drive.  I agreed to that attempt but told them I thought the system was probably unfixable.  

The very next day a technician arrived with a new hard drive.  He installed it and all seemed well, but soon after he left the system started to crash again.  I called Dell a second time, and told them the situation wasn't improved and I really felt the computer needed replacement.  They agreed, but said a replacement would require an upper management exception as the system was so far out of the exchange period.

To make a long story short - the exception was approved within hours and a new system was rushed to me.  This took exactly 2 phone calls and my description of the problem - no threats, no yelling, I didn't even have to get the client involved or give them a credit card number.  Dell trusted that I was correct and Dell did the right thing. I made my first phone call to Dell on Monday, and I had a replacement system from Dell on the following Tuesday.  

I have read that for every good experience people have, they tell 7 friends.  For every bad, they tell 10.  No company is perfect, and I know some of you have found yourselves in "Dell Hell", but this is a level of support that I think is worthy of pointing out to my client base!