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."
No Star Office? (Score:5, Interesting)
HP is going gung-ho (Score:5, Interesting)
It really is remarkable though: It seems that Microsoft was their own worst enemy, and they've pissed off so many of their large corporate partners that they have very few allies, and absolutely no one trusts them. I doubt that Microsoft is going anywhere for years to come, but these are fascinating twists that would never have been considered but a few years ago.
Can't be good for users (Score:1, Interesting)
I would have to agree that if you're going to offer anything else then Open Office or its ilk would have to be the way to go, don't give products to new users that end up making incompatible files with the vast majority of other users. It'll just leave them confused, frustrated and annoyed.
I'm all for using alternate products, but not at the expense of usability.
Is there something missing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No Star Office? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised at this. I can open almost any Word document with OpenOffice 6, and at worst I see a few formatting glitches. Even documents with lots of equations mostly convert well. Going in the other direction, I see more problems, mainly font ones.
I use Word 2000 (when I have to, since I find it more buggy than OpenOffice for those types of WP applications I have, which aren't really mainstream). Maybe the support for Word 97 isn't as good. Try saving your Word 97 documents in RTF format, although this won't help people who are sent
I only wish OpenOffice supported Excel spreadsheets as well as it did Word files. I'm almost in your position there - I have yet to see an Excel spreadsheet containing charts that OpenOffice can do even a mediocre job with. I haven't tried truly trivial cases as you mention.
WordPerfect is great (Score:4, Interesting)
The ability to have nearly full DTP style justification and control, as well as being a great word processor, grammar-checker and thesaurus, WordPerfect for the price is just the best choice for most people who would use Microsoft Word anyways.
Price competition (Score:3, Interesting)
After working extensively with all of the office suites debated here, and as much as i hate to admit it, to me, Microsoft Office is still the best product (heh only if you uninstall that damned paper clip office assistant). I just think they should lower their prices and a touch of that drop can be forwarded onto Joe Consumer next time he decides to become a dude and get a dell.
WordPerfect is still the King of wordprocessors (Score:2, Interesting)
WordPerfect is so far superior, it is funny to even talk about OO in the same sentence.
BTW, the version of WordPerfect being bundled, version 10, is actually the weakest of the three 32-bit versions (but still far better than Microsoft Word in producing "conventional" documents).
Wait until Corel puts its acts together and bring the quality of its next version to the level of WordPerfect 8. But even WordPerfect 10 is good enough for enterprise use. If you don't believe me, go to any store that sells SONY PCs and play with the program that has been pre-installed in the VAIOs.
We should never expect Microsoft to produce an office suite for Linux, but Corel may (Corel's CEO recently and repeatedly stated that Corel will consider a native Linux port if there is a market). Recent moves by HP, SONY, and DELL from MS Office to WordPerfect actually send a much bigger message: they may pave the way for their eventual migration to Linux desktops.
In other words, because the profit margins are so thin, by selling Windows machines, hardware companies are only helping Microsoft. Moving to Linux not only cuts down the price (which is indeed a very minor consideration), it also allows the hardware vendors to become software distributors, i.e., allowing them to retain some control over their customers.
However, there is one critical piece missing in the Linux puzzle game, and that is an enterprise level wordprocessor. WordPerfect will fit this need perfectly.
I understand OpenOffice 6.0.1, and more particularly KOffice (1.2 rc1), have made significant improvements. However, nothing can replace the user experience that must be accumulated over time. WordPerfect 8 was built based on years and years of usage and tens of millions of user experience. Corel management screwed up on WordPerfect 10, but the person in charge was recently fired. And with the recent service pack, WordPerfect 10 indeed is almost as powerful and reliable as version 8.
Re:Crap office suites. (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, at NCSU, we had that problem with Word documents, too. My favorite is when Word writes out a file that it can't read back in. I run those through OpenOffice and save them as RTF.
It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly for Microsoft, Word is not nearly as adept. It can barely convert to WordPerfect 5.1. Because of this (and nearly 40,000 WordPerfect documents on our networks), using MS Word in our organization would be reckless.
Finally, in the last three years, we've acquired 3 other companies. I converted all of them to WordPerfect Office 2000 (upgrading all locations to WordPerfect Office 2002 this week). Some users were so MS Word brainwashed that they panicked...and continue to panic even today. They believe that if it's not MS, it's not good. They also can't understand why we don't use AOL to get online! Needless to say, I don't worry too much about them. The rest of the organization wants to create word processing documents...quickly, reliably and professionally. WordPerfect does exactly that. Yes...you can share files and yes, it is more advanced than Word when it comes to complete control over formatting.
With all this going for it, why wouldn't HP and Dell offer this software? And the more people who go home with it, the better off we all are. We've never regretted our decision and we've never been hurt by it. Kudos to these industry leaders for taking the hard, but high road.
WP benefits: Open document source and XML (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason: "Reveal codes", which shows you the source of the document -- the text with all the formatting codes, with all the benefits you can imagine: You can see exactly which codes are doing what and where, insert and edit codes precisely, search for codes, double-click on one to change it, etc.
I always keep it open in a small window at the bottom, so I simultaneously get the source and the WYSIWYG. I'm not sure it appeals to the typical end user, but
Also, it should be a very good low-end XML editor: It natively uses formatting tags [b]like this[/b] (open Reveal Codes and see), it's supported SGML (an HTML/XML precursor and (superset?)) for over a decade and XML for a couple years. I've never had to try, but these guys think so (or try searching Google for much more info):
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/05/31/wordp
Re:REVEAL CODES IS GOOD (Score:3, Interesting)
I can simultaneously display the document source (the Reveal Codes) and WSYWIG in WordPerfect. I don't have to click three things and read a dialog balloon; it's displayed instantly, for everything (not depending on what I'm doing), as I type.
try latex. (Score:5, Interesting)
\bold{something in bold}.
there might be a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth it. the quality of the document is much higher than anything i've seen a word processor put out. it takes eps for figures which just rocks when printed.
latex is free and comes with most linux distros. there's even a version for windows, search for miktex on google, but i've never used it.
it's a bunch of macros to interface with tex, written by that uberpimp donal knuth.
OT: Anyone else use Mainframe WP? (Score:3, Interesting)
But the main word processor was WordPerfect 4.2 for the mainframe. And this is on the block oriented 3270 terminal. You had to get used to the clunky interface and how the cursor moved funky because of the 3270isms. It could do fonts and bold, italic yes, but on printout only. Remember these are character based terminals, "print preview" essentially just showed you margins, maybe some bold, and underline. Font size chagnes? Right. Change your font? Well, print it and hope for the best. Turnaround was attrocious; big jobs (anyting over 20 pages) jobs were automatically routed to one of the "big" printers, where they printed and the operators collected them and put them in bins. So you had to wait for the bin guy to vome around every hour or so to get your work. Saving your files, also fun!!! At that time VM/CMS didn't allow hierarchical filesystems, so all your files were in the same namespace, limited to 8.3 filenames. Good luck remembering what file is what 3 years from now. If you need more than 1.2Mb storage (yeah, nobody does) you can store it offline to tapes... then if you need it, you have to request it to be restored. That might take a day.
Slowly we changed from that. The PS/2s became more plentiful. You could actually print from them once in a while; at first you had to print to a postscript file, then ftp it to the mainframe, then print, but then we got real print servers. Pretty soon we became a real comp lab, with real apps where you could save somethng to a floppy. Now the mainframe is mothballed. Never updated it for y2k. Odd, cause Niketown uses VM/CMS, I should work there.
Works: $90; WP: $20 (Score:5, Interesting)
PCs for Everyone [pcsforeveryone.com] lists the following prices (all OEM, which requires a hardware purchase):
- WP Office 2002 Standard: $19
- Works 2002 (incl. Word): $89
- Office XP Small Business: $219
- Office XP Pro: $369
I have no idea what HP and Dell pay, but this is one data point.Hell, it undoes things for you.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Somehow, the document has gotten to the point where certain revisions to the auto-numbering simply *cannot* be accepted.
Actually, that's not entirely true, you can accept the revisions and then save the document, and it looks just fine.
But if you close Word, then re-load the document again, you'll find the revision marks are back. What's worse, is that these show up when anybody opens the document, even if it's been emailed and is on a completely different computer. I found out about this in a rather embarrassing way by mailing the supposedly "cleaned-up" version off to some higher ups in the Society for a look-through. It made me look amateurish for not having finished accepting the revisions and leaving obvious mistakes visible. Hey thanks Microsoft!
Now, I suppose I could manually go in and delete the auto-numbering and just manually number that section, but that would mean fighting with a 17 page auto-numbered document with a numbering change on page 3.
Unfortunately, it's gotten to the point now where I don't think I have much other choice. Either that or just re-type the entire flipping thing - which might actually be easier than futzing around with the auto-numbering feature.
I'd give eye-teeth for control codes like WordPerfect had. Of course, that'd make it too easy for anybody else to translate the doc format too, now wouldn't it. Bastards.
How Word drove me to the brink of insanity (Score:3, Interesting)
So I suffered. Man, did I suffer. I cursed Word up and down as I spent 45 minutes trying to create a two-column, wrap-around index. Word tried to be "helpful" by automagically turning my page numbering into an ordered list. Yay! It did this about 97 times, even after I thought I'd cleared all the formatting. Clear it, reformat it, hit a carriage return or a backspace, or some other innocuous key, and BAM! there goes Word, helping you out, whether you want it or not.
I pined for WordPerfect. Oh, sure, you can reveal formatting in Word, but it's those non-text areas that jump up and MAUL YOUR ASS in Word. I hate Word with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. Word is evil. It is the best example I can find of a crappy product winning out over several really good ones (WordPerfect included). WordPerfect is smooth, it's reveal formatting makes formatting simple and straightforward, rather than making you resort to endless menu selections. it's not a page layout app either, but man would my life have been easier with it.
Oh, that reminds me! Tabs! I can't f*#$Y# stand how Word handles tabs. I mean, Jesus Christ, an app as simple as AppleWorks has more capable and far more intuitive handling of tabs. In Word, you have to actually open up a freakin' menu and delve into it in order to use numeric controls to format something you should just be able to format in the ruler bar, but can't because it's such a pain in the ass!
And another thing...!
Re:Real term papers are done using LaTeX (Score:3, Interesting)
if you previously referenced equation 1-1 in the text, latex will also change this to 2-1 automatically.
latex will also change the table of contents, table numbering, references to these sections/tables in the text, etc.
i think this is too cool, and nifty.
LaTeX, professional looks and irony (Score:3, Interesting)
The great irony, of course, is that the standard class files supplied with LaTeX were never intended to be more than examples of what you could do. The people who wrote them viewed them as a decent showcase, but hardly high quality typesetting. The rest of the world, comparing them to what it had already, bowed down and cried "We're not worthy!" :-)
Re:This is not true. (Score:2, Interesting)
The unfortunate downside to Word--which we have seen in more than one high profile case--is its propensity for keeping invisible records of revisions within a document.
The last thing you want to send out with a draft contract or other legal document is a complete revision history. For paralegals that are used to using 'Reveal Codes', I imagine that it would be very unusual for any sort of hidden document features to sneak out the door.