On 10/9/10 1:33 PM, Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 08, 2010, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> On 10/8/10 5:55 PM, Warren Young wrote:
> ...
>>> Y'all may recall a different example: Word Perfect was also once offered
>>> on Linux for about a year, then pulled. OpenOffice wasn't even around
>>> at the time, so you can't blame competition. Corel had a near open
>>> field to play in, and still couldn't make a buck.
>>
>> Did you ever try that product? Even free it wouldn't have been a win against
>> Word on Windows - which was getting bundled on most new PCs at the time anyway.
>
> Au contraire, In September 1997 when we installed our first Linux system in
> a mission-critical position, it was in a law office as a file and print
> server for a bunch of Windows machines. The office manager was bitching
> mightily that their productivity dropped by about 50% when they were forced
> to use MS-Word instead of WordPerfect. These were very good legal
> secretaries who hated having to reach for a mouse to do anything, and loved
> the ``Reveal Codes'' ability in WordPerfect.
>
> I had to laugh one day when I got a phone call where the caller's first
> words were ``I want Reveal Codes''.
I didn't mean wordperfect in general, I meant the Linux version which had to run
under X, which at the time had fairly horrible hardware support, making it
fairly likely that the CPU would do all the work of screen updates. Something
that still hasn't changed all that much compared to OS's that embrace
vendor-written drivers.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com