I think I have to take this opportunity to promote TeX / LaTeX for word processing. Really, the workflow is so much better, especially on older hardware. Since you do all your editing in a lightweight text editor, there's no added frustration coping with long document loading/page scrolling times and all the other cruft that goes along with a full-featured word processor. Much more significantly, LaTeX makes editing the document SO much easier, because it automates the generation of your index, table of contents, title page (if needed), and footnotes.

Also, the pages it produces are much prettier than what you get from any word processor! You really should try it out if you haven't yet.