HP Drops Microsoft Word in Favor of WordPerfect 726
nexex points to this Financial Times article, which says that HP has dropped Microsoft Word from the software lineup in the personal computers it sells to customers. From the article: "The move follows a decision last week by Dell Computer, the number two PC maker, to replace Microsoft software. Both companies said they would offer WordPerfect productivity software from Corel of Canada instead of Microsoft's Works, a scaled-down version of its top-selling Office software." Nexex writes:"I think it should be noted, MS Works does include the full version of Word."
wow, MS is brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
HP, why not just go OpenOffice? Word Perfect has just as many bugs, and you'd save yourself (ultimately your consumers) a lot more money.
REVEAL CODES IS GOOD (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:1, Insightful)
Yet another facet to Microsoft's monopoly..
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:1, Insightful)
How can a prof even tell what word processing program you used to write a paper? And how many are so pro-Microsoft that they'd really care?
"I'm not accepting this Word Perfect spawned horror! True scholars only use fine Microsoft products."
Uh huh. Smells like something from MS' own PR FUD department.
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:2, Insightful)
I admit, I've never liked Word because I came into word processing on a weird little local text editor which featured strange embedded commands for formatting (PC Galahad at Clarkson University) and then went to WordPerfect 5.1. I got used to working with codes and being able to see those codes in my documents. WordPerfect feels like HTML for the desktop publishing sector to me. It just works really well. If this got a thousand more people to use WP, great.
One last thing about college use: most students have no idea how to really work with a word processor. They just know how to type. It's not going to take much to please them.
WP Userbase (Score:5, Insightful)
Before people go trashing on WordPerfect, let me point out some things you might not know about it:
And if you say it's not for you, you're right. It definitely fills an important niche that a lot of other apps can't or don't want to.
WP is flat out better (Score:5, Insightful)
MSWord exists today only because it was bundled by OEMs (originally as MSWorks, in crippled form... though the full version is still crippled...) It never could have caught on otherwise as no one that actually knew about word processors would have chosen it over WP if they actually had to pay for it.
Oh yea, what platforms does WP work on right now? At least these:
Amiga, every version ever made
Linux, every version ever made
Unix, every version ever made
Windows, every version ever made
Mac, every version ever made
I'm sure there are other versions -- the above ones are just the ones that I have personally used.
Do I know what I'm talking about? Well, I used to be a legal secretary before I started accumulating degrees. I have been tested out, several times, at 100+wpm. I was word processing on a Prime mainframe (using a text editor) before word processors (and PCs) existed.
When making a living depends on how fast you get a document out of the printer -- which word processor you use is extremely important.
The typing ability requirements for a legal secretary are far more stringent than any "normal" secretary. Glance in the want-ads in your local paper and you'll see what I mean. Legal secretaries are, on an almost daily basis, required to pump out GIGANTIC documents, always suddenly, always in a complete crisis situation, and always mere minutes before they must be faxed out. It is the rare law office that does not use WP, and the secretaries in the occasional law office that uses MSWord instead are extremely unhappy about it, bitch continuously, and quit constantly.
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, people... (to mangle a phrase) the perfect is the enemy of the good. Sure, it ain't perfect yet (but neither are StarOffice or OpenOffice), but it's definitely GOOD.
Let's be honest - Microsoft Office is one of the two key things that binds the vast majority of users out there to Microsoft. If nothing else (for example), Apple can't piss off MS *too badly* or else there's suddenly no new MS Office for Mac, and the Mac *instantly* becomes a much less palatable choice (logically or not).
If Microsoft can be reduced to a bully with the top OS, it's a lot easier to handle than a bully with the top OS and the top office suite.
Let's give credit where credit is due. It's a good first step.
This is a pile of marketing bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an interesting move and I really have to wonder what motivated it, but none the less, i think it's a good thing for the future of office suite compatibility.
To all those of you already posting saying, "but Office is the standard...": Come on. MS Office is not the "standard", it just holds the majority of the word processing market. And its not because it was a superior product when it came out to Word Perfect, it was because it was free (or bundled with your Wintel box).
To all those of you saying, "but what not OpenOffice?": Who cares? As long as it isn't MS office, it means competiton. Competition is always a good thing, even if its between minority market share holders. Once MS office isn't the only game in town, file formats will open up.
If the office market becomes segmented again, we should see a common file format emerge. Then it won't matter who's using MS Office, Word Perfect, or Star/Open Office.
Re:wow, MS is brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also worth noting that some vendors, such as Sony, went to WordPerfect as their word processor a few years back. Of course, their PC marketshare isn't as big as HP or Dell's, but it's still fairly significant. Could this be the start of a trend towards WordPerfect regaining at least some of its dominance?
Notepad? Dreamweaver (Score:2, Insightful)
I think comparing to DreamWeaver is more accurate for HTML editting.
Re:REVEAL CODES IS GOOD (Score:5, Insightful)
And why do you have to go through an obtuse menu for each block of text? Why can't I see the entire document's formatting options at once?
A Bigger Message (Score:2, Insightful)
It;s a question of target markets... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't... I find Word easy enough to use, they keep adding features that get around my problems (e.g. format painter), and after a while, you come to understand why it's doing what it's doing... you empathise. Well, some of the time anyway.
I guess my point is that Word is easy and friendly if you're NOT a 90wpm legal sec, but someone who does a different job but still needs to knock out the occasional half-decent document.
Oh, and you can undo anything that word helpfully (bless it) tries to do for you. Ctrl-Z undoes first word's attempts at helpfulness, and then whatever you last did.
Watch me disappear beneath the waves of ACs now for having actually stood up for microsoft...
... but why are these companies *really* doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
More than likely it really doesn't matter what non-Microsoft word processor these companies picked to bundle with their PCs.
We've seen it before, whether it be Word Perfect, Netscape or even Linux, these companies will offer these Microsoft alternatives only to have the Redmond company cozy up to them and offer them a sweet deal. Weeks later Microsoft products are back in their previous spots.
Most likely many companies have begun doing these changes only as a bluff to get Microsoft to lower their licensing prices to them, rather than any actual interest in the products themselves.
Meh.
Wordperfect has name recognition. (Score:3, Insightful)
WordPerfect Office is freaking $5 to OEM's. That is close enough to free (hell they may be getting it for free, that wouldn't hurt Corel either since no one is buying it anyway).
It's all about maximizing revenue. Oh and BTW the Word in works is stripped down (less templates, clipart, etc) and there is no comparing excel, access, outlook and powerpoint (oh yeah and publisher) to MS works (oxymoron if i've ever seen one) tools. And since when does a company care about saving their customers money? they only care about saving themselves money.
As I've said all along. (Score:3, Insightful)
pointless if its only the Word Pro (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:... but why are these companies *really* doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, good point. If I hadn't already posted in the thread (and if I had any mod points right now) I'd mod you up.
I guess I can only be cynical 1435 minutes a day, and this must have caught me in my semi-optimistic few minutes...
My hope is that things will be slightly different now that Dell and HP/Compaq are so big and can hopefully bring some *real* pressure to bear - if they put their minds to it (and we support them), maybe they'll stick it out for long enough to make a difference.
Microsoft Works vs. WordPerfect Office pricing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, for all we know, Corel might be offering WordPerfect Office for LESS that Microsoft is charging for Works! Considering the the basic version of Works doesn't come with any of the full-featured addons like Word or Microsoft Money, this might be a good deal for both HP and consumers alike.
Re:Crap office suites. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Try it before you speak... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to know any function keys or know how to read the reveal codes. Every tester in the software development labs I met prefer the interface of the WordPerfect app itself. Many still like Excel over Quatro Pro and would be lost without NT so they are not exactly anti-Redmond. They test lots of Office apps for creating documents in their testing.
I used WordPerfect8 in Linux and on Windows for awhile and liked it a lot. Try out a recent version and you may be surprised. If you have the chance, get a copy and use for a week when you have a few things to type up.
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What's the breakdown of MS's revenue? (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft last financial year generated $9.6bn of its total $28bn of revenues from desktop software.
Anyone know the breakdown of where the other $18.4 billion came from? I can't even begin to hazard a guess, but I had thought, perhaps naively, that desktop software was a bigger percentage than that.
This also raises another problem for MS: at least with Word 2000 (the only Word I have access to), the import filters for Wordperfect files are old (latest is WP 6!) and horrid, while the Wordperfect import filters for Word are recent and quite good. If this catches on, MS will be in deep kaka on the file-compatability scene. I suppose they could just throw more of their monke^H^H^H^H^Hprogrammers at the problem, but they'd have to at least wait until the next version to roll it out.
(Oh wait, what am I talking about? MS Office is part of the Operating System!)
Re:It;s a question of target markets... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what Microsoft word is good for. Throw something at it and it will come out looking fairly respectable. But do not care about what the stuff you produce looks like. If you fight it, Word will win.
Re:WP is flat out better (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the very best thing about WP, that I have never seen any other WP do, is that the "control codes" option always lets you see exactly why a document is behaving the way it is on screen: each formatting option is just a simple code between text brackets in a text document.
Sorry, but you are totally wrong about this. I used to think the way you do, but that was before I was forced to change to Word. Once I switched to the Word philosophy, I realized what a horrible nasty kludge the whole "reveal codes" thing really is.
There are two fundamental philosophies in play here:
a) Embedded codes. Basically, all formatting is embedded in the text (WordPerfect).
b) Styles. Paragraphs have styles, and letter strings have styles. Styles contain formatting information. Change the style, and you've changed everything that uses it. Styles can be inherited. Just about everything that you can do with formatting can be in a style (outlining, shading, TOC, columns, bullet lists, number lists).
The reason so many WP people get frustrated with not being able to see the codes is that they don't understand styles. If you just understand that everything comes from the style, then you don't need to see the codes. The only reason you need to see the codes is because the codes can get so screwed up. With styles, you may not totally understand the interactions of the styles, but you know exactly where all the formatting comes from.
Like I said, I sympathize with your feelings. I was dragged kicking and screaming away from reveal codes, because it appealed to me as a programmer. But there's no question that Word's "object oriented" nature is hands-down superior.
Upgrade Costs (Score:3, Insightful)
When I finally "upgraded" the OS from Win95 to WinME (I know I know but I was told that it was basically Win98 3rd edition... anyhow) WordPerfect would not function.
Uninstall, reinstall.
Nothing.
One call to tech support later I had a solution given to me: Just pay $100 to upgrade to WordPerfect2000. This did not quite fit my budget at the time (and still doesn't) given the fact that the only added functionality I needed was the ability to work under the operating system I had bought to fix the Microsoft glitch of not recognizing AMD processors in Win95 that were faster than 300MHz.
Needless to say I have been glad to see StarOffice evolve and ecstatic to see OpenOffice mature. If I already bought your software, please don't make me suffer just because time has moved on...
It was fine software but I am not going back. They had their chance and blew it.
More money for MS in long run. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WP is flat out better (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the internal result is the same, but the user doesn't see it that way, and the zillion subtle variations on "normal" style are non-obvious. Reveal-codes may not be OO, but it sure is user-friendly.
Object-oriented is wonderful when done right -- but the user interface can make or break it. MS Word's is broken.
Re:HP is going gung-ho (Score:5, Insightful)
Lotus Smartsuite (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WP was the standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exactly. As I remember it, it was around Windows 3.1's announcement when MS went to WordPerfect (and Lotus as well) BEGGING them to write for Windows, touting Windows' many supposed virtues as an environment.
Neither WP nor Lotus was moved. Perhaps they saw the Windows environment, with its centralized driver data, nullified their investment in having written DOS drivers for every screen, printer and video card (WP-5.1 had a VGA preview WYSIWYG option.) Perhaps they felt betrayed by MS and Intel setting standards for Expanded Memory and then arranging Windows to make use of the (LIM-4) standard very difficult, indeed, for most users who hadn't heard of QEMM memory management. And perhaps it was WP and Lotus' own hubris. For whatever reason, both WP and Lotus' Windows products were years late and the early versions were crash-happy under Windows to boot.
Anyway, MS virtually gave away VAR licenses for Word and, later, Office to get market share, apparently, and at WP and Lotus' expense.
But MS did not steal users from WP; WP gave them away.
For what it's worth, I STILL depend on WP5.1 for my writing. Good thing it runs fine under DOSEmu. Oh, and it was written in assembler!
Re:No Star Office? (Score:3, Insightful)
WP now has a Word compatibility mode -- where everything looks and behaves just like Word. (I'd have to check whether that also defaults to saving in Word format, but you can always Save As regardless.) So no one has the excuse of being "confused" by a different interface. And WP installs common import/export filters (like for for Word) by default.
Conversely, StarOffice looks and behaves more like WordStar for DOS!! Talk about a confusing interface.
Rich text format is the lingua franca of word proc (Score:3, Insightful)
Modern word processors are bloated messes. "Creeping featurism" [google.ca] has run rampant. How many of your average users ever learn more than a very small percentage of their word processors features? How many of those features would never have been added if the word processor's company's business model wasn't built on selling their customers an upgrade to a "new, improved" model every couple of years?
Re:Works: Doesn't Necessarily Contain Word(?) (Score:2, Insightful)
More to the point HP has never distributed "Works Suite 2002" with PC's; it distributes "MS Works 6.0". Therefore it cannot be said that Word is being dropped, since it was __never__ bundled in the first place.
It should be noted that HP is giving away a 30-day trial version of Corel WordPerfect Office whilst also continuing to bundle away Ms Works 6.0 with is PCs.
hp pavilion 512n desktop PC [hp-at-home.com]
Now how could that have come about? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. With cries of `DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run [amazon.com]' ringing in my imagination, it's not that hard to figure out what one of the reasons was. It's not as if DR-DOS was welcomed [seattleweekly.com] to Windows or anything.
Re:WP was the standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, not at all, I'm a Christian too... Why are you responding to a question no one asked?