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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."
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
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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.
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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 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
Thanks for playing.
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.
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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.
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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....
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.
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.
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.
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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.'"