I started with a manual and then an electric typewriter. Fixing simple mistakes was sheer torture. A lifesaver was the first Smith Corona Word Processor I used to write papers in graduate school. It was a breeze compared to the now obsolete typewriter. When it came to writing my thesis, nothing beat Microsoft Word, the King Of All Word Processing Programs in existence. Today writing reports and documents is so easy, we wonder why it took so long to invent what what is taken now for granted. I'm one of those who doesn't want to go back to the days of replacing worn ribbon and having to start all over again because I mistyped a word. In any event, what Bush did 30 years ago shouldn't even be an issue because he's not running on his NG service for President. Kerry IS running on his four months in Vietnam. The partisan media's attempt to strike a phony balance between the two candidates' wartime experience is what has gotten them between a rock and a hard place.
MS Word is great, but before that I thought Wordstar and CP/M were the greatest thing to happen after using typewriters for years. Before printing with Wordstar, practically every typed paper had corrections on it (and my trashcan was filled with wadded up discarded papers). Nowadays printing is a breeze!