Wow, I just tried the newest abiword update and they are doing a lot of work on that program.
Its much better than when I used to use it before openoffice 2x came out. I'm going to have to play with it a little more but for writing reports and definitely bulleted notes its probably better than openoffice writer.
I noticed that when I used linux mint that openoffice had all kinds of issues with bullets. It would not unindent properly when I pressed enter with a blank bullet and would get them out of alignment, ect. Abiword doesn't have this problem.
Its interface is very old school but its effective enough. It doesn't have a problem keeping up with fast typers anymore.(I used to get annoyed with its "flickering" but it doesn't have that problem anymore)
I use ms word for just about everything now but I plan to keep playing with abi now. Its coming along very nicely.