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HP Drops Microsoft Word in Favor of WordPerfect
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."
It would seem that you can only get Word included with the 2002 edition of Works Suite, which costs twice as much as Works.
Here are some links from newegg that seem to indicate as much:
Works, Standard
Works Suite
~geogeek
People are used to using Office products as the 'standard', so why not give them an alternative that will operate approximately the same.
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...
MS Works does *NOT* always include word. The MS Works suite, full version ($99) includes word. The pre-installed version of works on your friendly OEM Computer MAY or MAY NOT have MS Word.
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
sig?
I just bought a computer for my son from Dell, and by dropping the option for MS Office Professional, I saved close to $400. Now, that's Dell setting prices, not MS, but it still saves me a bundle. My son (just entering college) seems perfectly happy using OO.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Depends on what you're doing but Word can reveal field codes and non-printing codes. If you want to know about a particular block of text, click on help -> what's this -> then click on the block of text. A dialog baloon will appear informing you what's going on with the block of text. Paragraph and font formatting are both revealed in this dialog. Alternatively you could press shift-F1 to call up the what's this pointer.
Have you all just come out of a coma recently? Microsoft owns about 25 percent of Corel. So MSFT won't make as much money as they could have, they still get some percentage off the top of this sale. Plus it looks good to the illiterati (aka the DOJ) who think that Corel is still a competitor to Microsoft.
This is like cussing at Arab terrorists while you're standing at a gas pump.
Have you ever considered Gobe? 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 a review from Ars Technica. And if you still want to complain, go use vi or emacs or even notepad.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
I wouldn't say it is a complete replacement for Matlab, but it is pretty nice:
http://www.octave.org/
Before logging on to Slashdot I just printed a few documents PDF in OpenOffice. Works a treat - not just a WP facility.
Thanks for playing.
For tables see:
http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/merg eCells.png
Martin Sevior
AbiWord Developer
We must not forget "Export to PDF".
There is a way you can create PDFs from *any* program, and with all free software too:
Adobe's free PostScript printer driver to output to PS
Then GhostScript and GhostView to quickly convert the PS to PDF format.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
I feel the need to clarify on the following statement:
"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. 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.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Hmmm, I guess you've never dealt with large docs before? Around 800 pages of text, word starts to struggle while rendering typed text (intel 1.4)....your words come out in spurts. Same with a doc with ohh..lets say 70 figs (pngs) in about 50 pages...not to mention that fact that when you reopen your doc you should knock on wood that your figs are layed out the same as when you last saved it. Oh, and the constant disappearing cursor... and the....
Microsoft has steadily been adding in natural language support to all thier programs, indeed Microsoft's Speech SDK is up to 5.1 already. Windows XP comes with speech recognition (and hand writting recognition too.) so does office 2000, and XP I believe. The interfaces(i.e. hooks for the MS speech APIs) have been there for years though.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
You're either misinformed or purposefully bending the truth. WordPerfect has been the standard for word processing under Windows in many areas of the "real world." Legal documents for example usually must be in WordPerfect format or on paper in order to even be looked at by most lawyers. The same is true of almost all financial documents and even little things like memos in the upper levels of management at many fortune 500 companies.
Microsoft has put a lot of money into funding schools (especially smallish schools) under the condition that they'll offer classes primarily requiring MS Word for their document format. I used to be the Assistant I.T. Manager for one of those small schools and I was the one who constantly got harassed by MS salespeople making such offers. (It should be noted that the school folded under the pressure of MS's marketing less than three weeks after I left, and I really can't wholly blame them. They needed the funding badly.)
MS has been trying for years to make Word the de facto standard for Word processing, especially in younger people. That you say what you did the way they did means that they're slowly succeeding... damn it.
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
I've never used it, because I bought the thing for my girlfriend, and she only liked it because 'they're pretty'. So three of the five big names have chosen Corel over Microsoft. What about Compaq and Gateway? Yes I know HP bought Compaq out.
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.
Your post is so full of utter lies, I don't even know where to begin.
You can do most things in Word with the keyboard, and can create macros and remap things to your whim. You aren't FORCED to use the mouse, but the mouse is there for you to use if you are fluent with it, and to "discover" things via menus and right-clicks, etc.
Also:
by doing things it wasn't asked to do (and of course, cannot be undone)
More utter lies. You can turn off any auto-assisting feature you don't like, and you can always undo any automatically applied formatting. ALWAYS. And the XP version has gotten even better about this, by not getting in your way so much by default.
And if typing speed is really a problem (you must have a slow computer), you can always type in draft mode, instead of page view mode. Much faster. And I doubt you could out-type it.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Can a 2GHz PC with only 128MB RAM really compare with a 600MHz PC with 1GB RAM?
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.
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 ...
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.
Umm.... Microsoft did release a patch for this problem.
I just love how Slashdot headlines are titled to put the most spin on an article which says something else.
In this case, Word (which wasn't mentioned in the article at all) is in the Title of the article.
Let me just clarify something. According to the article, HP is going with Corel WordPerfect instead of Microsoft Works (not Works Suite which includes Microsoft Word) for their HOME systems.
It's a different market. Personally, I don't use any Office suite at home. As I work on one at work (some software company in Washington), I don't feel inclined to be constantly reminded of my work at home.
More than one item (*cough*xbox*cough*) in your list may be a loss leader, or just seem to act like one.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
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.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Open office might be more compatable with word, but it is harder to use thatn Wordperfect. Anyone who has used MS-Word to do numbered documents, would jump for joy when they see how wordperfect does it (it does it RIGHT, that is why the lawers use it. Lots of numbered documents). With word the numbering and formatting are seemingly randomly decided
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"