I just got a macbook pro; this is my first time using mac programing, I usually use windows. So with windows I used programs like WordPrefect or Microsoft Works Task Launcher to write papers for school and such, but I can't find a program similar on my laptop. Can someone help? What's the program called that I'd use? Would I have to download one, or is it on my computer already?
Thank you in advance. :)

TextEdit is fine for some limited uses. See the first link below for an example of what can be done with TextEdit.

OpenOffice is free and worth about that much. It seems to be a knee-jerk answer for ex-PC folks. For a better experience, try NeoOffice. OpenOffice isn't a true OS X application, but is a port of Sun's source code they bought from a German company, and finally sold to Oracle. NeoOffice is developed specifically for OS X and is smaller, more stable, faster, has native OS X text highlighting, is just as capable, and more efficient that OO. NeoOffice also has glyph kerning like Apple's Applications, so text appears much better than with OO where glyphs must be aligned with each pixel.

Macs have an program called TextEdit, but it's not really what you're looking for, because it works more like Notepad. Other than that, Macs don't really have any preinstalled text editing program. I'd recommend you download OpenOffice. It's just like Microsoft Office, except it's open source, meaning it's free.

Some Macs come with pages and some don't. I think it only comes with pages if you pre-ordered it that way. Otherwise you have no software to use for writing. I use microsoft office for mac. Luckily for me a friend hadn't used code on three different computers yet, so I was able to get it for free.

FREE:
- Look in your Applications folder for an app called "TextEdit"
- Google Docs

PAID:
- Office for Mac (Microsoft)
- iWorks' Pages (Apple)