A word regarding Word

I would just like to say to the person in ITS who informed me that Microsoft Word is the Very Best Program for secretaries to lay posters out with, and, no, the college was not going to allow me to purchase a "lay Out pro GRAM" (pronunciation and emphasis original to the conversation) so I could do my job in a reasonable manner?

I'd just like to say to this person -- Word. Sucks. Very. Large. Rocks. And I hope your stock in MicroSmurf plummets.

Thank you.

Less on Word, More on Other Software

OK, you knowledgeable bunch, you.

I drive a Mac at the day-job and, despite having used it for a year to make about a bazillion (really classy, if I do say so myself) posters (yes, in Word. Yes, I am made of Awesome. Also, patience. Or was that Sheer Bloody-mindedness? Whatever.) and do all the other report-making, database wrangling and whatever it is that somebody decides that I need to have been doing Forever for them this week with it, I don't know anything about, say, installing software on it. This is not an Insurmountable Problem, maybe; there is ITS. I can probably get the backing of my bosses (all of whom are In Awe of the design work I've been doing) to install a program that actually works, as long as it doesn't, like, come out of the departmental budget.

The heartbreaker, of course, is that all my artist and designer friends swear that Mac is an Artist's Machine; you can do beautiful work on it! Which makes me wonder just what I could do if I wasn't tied to the abomination that is Word. This all kinda came to a head today because I'm trying to do something that I have done many times in, ferghodssake, Publisher, and I can't cajole Word to play nice.

Suggestions, commentary, donations of large sums of money?