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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."
I am surprised they aren't going for something more compatible with Microsoft Office like Star Office. People are used to using Office products as the 'standard', so why not give them an alternative that will operate approximately the same. Putting Word Perfect on them will just confuse the people who are used to Word, and they will be upset when their Word at work will not read what they did at home. They won't understand enough to install the converters, and even those don't work 100%. I realize that SO and Open Office aren't perfect either, but I am not sure this is the best way to go Microsoft-free for the average consumer.
HP also just became the first big VAR to base "business" PCs around AMD's processors. HP is busy kicking sand in the faces of the big boys. Then again with Compaq HP isn't no small player itself.
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.
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
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.
----- obSig
Ask any secretary that actually TYPES for a living, especially the ones that need to do complex text formatting (e.g., legal secretaries) -- the secretaries that type 90+wpm. They *all* agree, and I mean every single last one, that nothing can *touch* word perfect for speed of text input. The function keys, which have mapped to more or less the same functions since 1985 (...earlier?), allow experienced users to do many things in less than a second that would otherwise take quite a while to do with a mouse. WP was, and is still *keyboard* based -- that means that if you know what you are doing, you can do everything in WP, very quickly, without ever taking your hands off the keyboard. I can't imagine ever having to use that horrible MSword to do anything except under threat of starvation. 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. There's never any question of why something looks the way it does in WP. No matter what the function, whether it be bold, or column size, or printer type, or whatever, it is just a simple code between brackets. In contrast, MSWord users are constantly baffled by a program that is trying to "assist" the user, by doing things it wasn't asked to do (and of course, cannot be undone) -- which is generally chalked up as being "just the way the program is,;" or else the users just feel like they are stupid and don't know how to use the program properly.
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.
word processor documents that they can't print in our labs. Headaches, ahoy.
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.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
and when you get something like a stuck italics function where there is no character? How do you select it?
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?
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Thanks for playing.
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!
I happily use WordPerfect on Windows every day, and I have my choice of apps.
/. users should appreciate it.
e rfect/
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
Give me a break, WordPerfect is still more functional as a word processor. The interface is better and the placment for items in the menus and the toolbars are more functional.
_ _
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.
_______________________________________________
ACK
if you want more control of your document and you like reveal codes then latex is for you. really though to make something bold it's just:
\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.
-- john
PCs for Everyone 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.