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.
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.
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?
Re:wow, MS is brilliant (Score:2, Informative)
Re:wow, MS is brilliant (Score:3, Informative)
There is a way you can create PDFs from *any* program, and with all free software too:
Adobe's free PostScript printer driver [adobe.com] to output to PS
Then GhostScript and GhostView [wisc.edu] to quickly convert the PS to PDF format.
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.
No Star Office? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No Star Office? (Score:2)
Re:No Star Office? (Score:2)
Re:No Star Office? (Score:3, Funny)
WP was the standard... (Score:4, Informative)
Word is MS's crown jewel, but Word got where it is today buy stealing users from WP.
Wordperfect is *still* used in the Legal Industry far more than MS office. When I worked at the NYS DEC a few years ago, I didn't have word on my shiney Dell PC--I had wordperfect, and so did everyone else in all of EnCon.
Though it's a mind-boggling hack, Wordperfect and MS Word can and do talk to each other. In fact, having the two of them duke it out might be just the thing that OO needs to get some real work done on it, and get to be a usable beast...
Re:WP was the standard... (Score:3)
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!
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?
Re:WP was the standard... (Score:3, Funny)
In a Communist country, everyone would just keep using Wordstar.
Re:WP was the standard... (Score:3, Funny)
Wordstar! Bah! It was only with extreme reluctance that I recently upgraded from my IBM Seletric to Electric Pencil.
Re:No Star Office? (Score:2)
I haven't used WP since version 8 for Linux, but it was more capable of reading and saving MS Word documents then than other Linux word processors. I know the other word processors have improved a lot since then, but I assume that so has WP.
Yes, it would be nice if HP went with StarOffice, but I'm happy to see some diversity in the office software used.
Re:No Star Office? (Score:3)
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.
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.
Re:No Star Office? (Score:2)
---
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.
Re:HP is going gung-ho (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Profit Margins (Score:3, Informative)
Of course not. My rule of thumb is to knock off enough MHz from the CPU you think would be cool to have, to cover the cost of doubling (or more) the amount of RAM. For common tasks, this makes a huge difference in performance. That's the advice I give to everybody who makes the mistake of asking me, and then they look at me funny.
I wonder if this is some screwy cost-saving measure?
Gee, I have no idea! But I have a gut feeling that it is.
Your point is valid - I forgot about the stupid amounts of RAM manufacturers ship their low-cost machines with.
REVEAL CODES IS GOOD (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:REVEAL CODES IS GOOD (Score:3, Informative)
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?
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.
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:REVEAL CODES IS GOOD (Score:2)
It really let you specify where each formatting would begin or end, and could be hidden if you didn't like it. And Word still doesn't have something comparable (Word is too WYSIWYG to include it now, it would mean they should've included it earlier).
Notepad? Dreamweaver (Score:2, Insightful)
I think comparing to DreamWeaver is more accurate for HTML editting.
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.
Works: Doesn't Necessarily Contain Word(?) (Score:2, Informative)
Here are some links from newegg that seem to indicate as much:
Works, Standard [newegg.com]
Works Suite [newegg.com]
~geogeek
Why not Open/StarOffice? (Score:2)
Of course, in spite of the fact that I personally find WordPerfect to be horrendously confusing, there are some segments of the industry that are still standardized around it as a word processor. I've been told that lawyers still use WP, mostly for historical reasons. (That's what they are used to, and there are a lot of old documents and standard forms in that format.)
Re:Why not Open/StarOffice? (Score:2)
Because, as you said, there are some people who actually know what WordPerfect is, and have used it before... in fact in my personal experience more people associate "WordPerfect" with a word processor than "Word," mainly I believe because it's been around so long and it *is* used by a lot of people. The claim by a salesperson that "StarOffice is just like Office, and can read Office documents, and is cheaper" sounds like a generic branded rip-off... even if it may not be. In fact, IMHO, it's very bad marketing to try to make the name sounds similar to a "Office", because it sounds moreso like a ripoff than if it was called, say "DocPro." Same goes for "Lindows." OK now I'm rambling.
No thanks, I'll buy a real "Rollix" watch somewhere else.
Re:Why not Open/StarOffice? (Score:3, Informative)
Partly. Partly it's inertia - a result of the fact that law firms usually have a tremendous investment in standardized templates for legal documents, and have no particular desire to reinvent the wheel by switching to Word. And partly there are solid technical reasons why legal firms stick with WP, like the amusing collisions between MS Word and Rule 32 [kentlaw.edu], which is admittedly not so funny if you've been burned by Word's misbehavior.
And there are a host of reasons similar to that - see this article [llrx.com] for a long laundry list of common complaints about Word from legal users...
MS Works Suite (Score:5, Informative)
Back when I worked for Best Buy a year ago, this was a big advantage of buying a sony computer. They included the full works suite. Many (read: HP / Compaq) only included the MS Works Word Processor, MS Works Spreadsheet, etc.
MS Works Word Processor is a very stripped version of MS Word. It has no spell check, no auto format, and is missing many key functions of Word. As far as I could tell, it's existance was only to whet people's tastebuds to get them to buy office, because after using Word, trying to use "MS Works Word Processor" is a joke.
~Will
Re:MS Works Suite (Score:2)
no auto format, and is missing many key functions of Word
Sounds great! I hate autoformat.
Re:MS Works Suite (Score:3)
Erm, yes, it does, and it always has.
no auto format, and is missing many key functions of Word.
I hate autoformat, and many of the "key features" of MS Word are not used by 99% of the people who buy it. I've sold hundreds of copies of Word over the years, and most of the buyers did nothing complicated enough to justify the expense, but they felt better knowing they had purchased Word.
I imagine that this sheeple mentality is what sells most copies of Word to non-business users.
I still remember, when Lotus 1-2-3 reigned, the thousands of idiots who spent $700 learning to use it, and these were frequently people who could have calculated all of their expenses on one-side of a dinner napkin. The ancestors of those idiots buy systems with 1800+ processors and 512MB of RAM (with 128MB Geforce 4 video cards) because they want to chat on ICQ, send and receive e-mail, and play Solitaire. The are "upgrading" from Pentium 3-based systems with which they could have happily performed the same tasks for the next decade.
I guess I should be glad to take their money, but instead I feel guilty.
Anyway, the point is that Word is a great WP, but too much for the majority of its users. If I do talk to a customer who is counting pennies and not blinded by hype, I download Abiword for them, and it usually works just fine for their needs.
Is there something missing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Victory... NOT! (Score:2, Informative)
This is like cussing at Arab terrorists while you're standing at a gas pump.
Re:Victory... NOT! - incorrect (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bzzzzt! Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks for playing.
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.
This is not true. (Score:5, Informative)
"The legal profession still relies on it - your lawyer uses WordPerfect and most legal forms are available in that format."
This is absolutely not true.
Now, you may definitely argue that a larger proportion of the legal community relies on WordPerfect than does the general office community. However, the legal profession itself does not rely on WordPerfect.
My father is a lawyer. I set up his law firm's computers. I've known many other lawyers and set up their law firm's networks. What you said was true 3-5 years ago, but most of them have now switched to Word.
And as for legal forms being in WordPerfect format, with the hundreds of legal forms I have had to use, they have been in one of three formats:
a) Hard Copy (as in, a piece of paper that you have to use a typewriter to type on)
or, more often,
b) PDF
or
c) a proprietary format that has to be used with a $5,000-$50,000 piece of crappy software.
ALL of the government forms that a law firm needs are in PDF. Most of the other things that lawyers used to get in hard copy (for instance, the legal books that you see in their offices) are now available for a subscription fee via sites like FindLaw.com [findlaw.com]. About 50% of the forms that come through a lawyer's office are hard copy, 40% are PDF, and 10% are proprietary, and honestly, I haven't seen a WordPerfect law document in years. Most of the hard copy ones are saved directly to either Microsoft Word or PDF via Acrobat, so the number of hard copy forms will continue to decrease.
From reading your post, it sounds like you haven't encountered WordPerfect in a couple of years, either, and are basing your opinions on what you saw a few years ago. The Internet is becoming quite integral to any lawyer these days, and as such, the number of non-Word proprietary formats for documents is decreasing rapidly (especially since there was a huge government initiative to convert everything to PDF.) Thus, your post was accurate as of a few years ago, but is no longer the case.
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.
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...
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.
_______________________________________________
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.
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:WP is flat out better (Score:5, Informative)
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.
... 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.
Re:... but why are these companies *really* doing? (Score:3)
You think it'll be the carrot? I always had MS down as a stick, stick, STICK, look i've got a carrot, but have some more STICK! kind of company.
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.
This is a pile of marketing bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is a pile of marketing bullshit (Score:2)
And HP doesn't sell all that many units in the corporate market, Dell has that cornered. Hence why HP's profit is all in the print division. And why they played hardball when Dell announced it wanted to do its own printers.
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.
No, no, no (Score:2, Funny)
RMN
~~~
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.
What's wrong with. . . (Score:3, Funny)
KFG
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.
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.
As I've said all along. (Score:3, Insightful)
pointless if its only the Word Pro (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Microsoft Works vs. WordPerfect Office pricing? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course Corel is charging less for PerfectOffice than MS Works. Otherwise why switch?
That's the beauty of the whole situation. The computer industry has finally got to the point where the hardware OEMs have no choice but to start cutting costs in the one area where prices have refused to drop, software. HP and Dell have historically been too scared of Microsoft to switch to the less expensive software vendors, but now these companies don't really have much of a choice. The fight between Dell and HPaq has gotten so fierce that they no longer care what Microsoft does. Besides, if Microsoft pushes too hard both of these companies might become interested in really ramping up their Linux efforts.
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.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
5 Year Plan: (Score:4, Funny)
Do they still include Notepad? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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)
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?
What Full Version? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, no it doesn't. Works Suite 2002 does. MS Works 6.0, however, does not. Works Suite 2002 is a new and different program (I think it's designed to replace Office - Small Business Edition). MS Works, which is a fraction of the cost of Works Suite 2002, has always included scaled down word processor and spreadsheet - it's only recently that those two applets have started res. Trust me - I've been using Works since version 2.0 in the DOS days. It never has, and never will, include a full version of Word.
I try to avoid Corel (Score:3, Informative)
With that said, I'm glad to see Microsoft take one in the shorts, however small. Hmm, that works on two levels.
I agree with the multitudes who point out that OpenOffice might be a better choice, but then again, maybe they were thinking about liability.
YES IT DOES (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, it does. (Score:2)
It is quite a good deal too at $109, compared to $339 for Word 2002 by itself. Of course, there may be some restrictions on the usage of the Works Suite version of Word 2002. Works Suite 2002 seems to be marketed towards home users. Perhaps there is a "no commercial use" clause in the EULA.
Re:Yes, it does. (Score:2)
Re:Real cost (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Real cost (Score:2)
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:2)
My school requires all engineers, architects, and sciences majors to purchase a software pack, which includes the educational version of MS Office, so I don't think it would be a huge problem to buy a computer with word perfect. It also includes AutoCad, Mathmatecia, Matlab, and alot of other stuff. For $500, it's not a bad deal, compared to actual software costs. Insert random comment about opensource software prices here, but first find me a substitute for AutoCad or Matlab.
~Will
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:2)
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.octave.org/
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:2)
It can only be installed twice or something but usually costs around $10. Even if you have to install it more than twice, at $10 you are still having major savings.
I haven't used MS Word much until recent when I started doing massive resume/cover letters. Businesses DO NOT appreciate text only formats unless they SPECIFICALLY ask for them.
Abiword has done wonders for me.
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.
You're right, but HP should still take the risk (Score:2)
Its a risk, but HP needs to take a risk - even with Compaq, they are no match for the cost cutting and distribution that Dell offers.
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) (Score:2)
Re:Bad decision (non standard software) - BULLSHIT (Score:2)
I have had tests before where I had to write an essay in the alloted time in the computer lab, and if you don't know how to use word then you are screwed.
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: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.
I work at a college, too (Score:2)
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.
Re:Crap office suites. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Crap office suites. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:shrug (Score:3, Informative)
Have you ever considered Gobe [gobe.com]? It rocked on BeOS, and now its available on the Windows platform. And if you don't want to trust their marketing, then here's [arstechnica.com] a review from Ars Technica. And if you still want to complain, go use vi or emacs or even notepad.
Amigori