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Microsoft Word 5.1: The Apex of Word Processing

Posted by michael on from the when-men-were-men-and-programs-were-scared dept.

angkor writes "'Word 5.1 is 13 years old in 2004. Many people still swear by it. Powerful features, stable application, without bloat. Nirvana by Microsoft. It's been all downhill from there...' I always thought WordPerfect 5.1 was pretty good as well. I still use it alongside my OfficeXP."

7 of 591 comments (clear)

  1. 5.1 for Mac by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative
    In case anyone's confused (since Word for Windows jumped from Word 2 to Word 6 without any inbetween versions - take that Slackware!), this article is about Word 5.1 for Mac.

    There was probably a DOS Word 5 too.

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    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:5.1 for Mac by iocat · · Score: 5, Informative
      Word 5.1 was ok for a Microsoft product, but serious Mac word processors always used the blisteringly fast WriteNow (originally by T/Maker, later published by TLC). It was done in 68000 assembly and originally started as an Apple funded project which was a hedge against the possibility that MacWrite might not get done in time for the Macintosh launch.

      In addition to the fastest word count ever seen (essential if you're a journalist), it also came with really well written and funny manuals. Even emulated on the first PowerMacs, it ran circles around WORD and had great line spacing abilities (essential if you're a student trying to hit a page count).

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    2. Re:5.1 for Mac by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 5, Informative

      Microsoft Word for DOS 5.5a is available for free download from Microsoft here.

      To install run "wd55_ben -d" after downloading, then run setup.exe

      No, I have no idea why it's available for free download, but there it is,
      free for all comers apparently.

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  2. Re:Spell check by niko9 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have you tried Abiword?

    Small, fast, light and with spellcheck. Will let you save as .doc also, which lets me print out all my papers at school wheer they only have windos and mac boxes.

  3. Word: nice -- if and when... by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 5, Informative
    When I use Windows at work, Word is powerful and pretty nice...if and when it works. It doesn't crash on me, but it does refuse to do what I tell it sometimes; power users get used to doing workarounds, so it's not that big of a deal if you use it every single day -- you memorize its idiosyncracies.

    However, several times I've seen a whole group of Word power users (not clueless lusers) need to given up on a document and start over from scratch -- usually just on little things like the company business plan or 12 month road map (urk). The only workaround each time was to copy/paste the original document text into a new Word file, because Word was hopelessly confused by whatever little magic cookies it had left in the original document.

    I.e. I know it's not just me being confused, I see this happen to everyone who uses Word heavily on big documents, sooner or later.

    To be charitable, this may be the eventual fate of any huge app that grows by accretion from a small program to a hugely enormous giganto app, without being redesigned and recoded and refactored along the way.

    So yeah, Word -- nice when it works, I guess, but it can be quite frustrating other times.

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    1. Re:Word: nice -- if and when... by XeRXeS-TCN · · Score: 5, Informative

      At the risk of sounding like a spokesman, if you think OpenOffice takes a while to load up (it *can* be kinda slow at times) or you don't like the various releases of Word, you can always use Abiword.

      It is quite lightweight (only needs a 486 and 16mb of RAM to run) despite looking very similar in style and operation to the latest versions of both OOo and MS Word. It's also compatible with both Word and OOo, and supports many other formats both internally and via plugins, such as WordPerfect etc.

      Personally, I have OOo and Abiword installed, so that I can use Abiword for word processing, and OOo for spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations whenever I need to. I also run Abiword on my old 300MHz laptop, and it runs with no lag whatsoever, unlike when I tried running OOo on it.

  4. Re:Strange... by ignorant_newbie · · Score: 5, Informative

    you may not have any MSOffice _windows_ running, but I'll bet you a copy of Office XP that if you check your 'startup items' folder, you'll find that office is preloading it'self at boot.

    This isn't a bad thing, Just be aware of it when making comparisions. OOo is taking longer because it's not already there.

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    Sitting Walrus Blog