Wordperfect Ftw!

[Msterbeau]

Better late then never?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...reme-court.html

[Shade Everdark]

I know it doesn't really answer the question fully, as to whether Microsoft engaged in monopolistic practices, but my anecdotal evidence suggests that WordPerfect lost out to Word simply because Word was easier to use. Granted, the last time I used WordPerfect was its version that came out for Windows 95, but even before then, Word was simply easier for me to use (and given the available complexity of Word, especially these days, that's saying something). Maybe for a different kind of user, or a more advanced 'office' person, WordPerfect was the better product, but I always sided with Word, even when I held onto Netscape longer than I reasonably should have.

I hate saying it, but Microsoft, for all its crap products and crap practices, is not always the bad guy.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

bah! Like that ws really the downfall of Wordperfect... Novel only owned them for a very short period of time...

Wordperfects own mistakes is what did them in. They were the #1 in market share with WP5.1. Then, they rushed WP6 to market. Half of the promissed new features were not just bugged.. they flat out did not work. Wordperfect had a big fix version, 6.1 come out about 6 months later... but because they feared a class action.. they gave everyone that purchased 6 a free copy of 6.1 and ate all costs to develop and preduce it. This drained WP corps banka accounts... So Novel bought them up... Fixed, for the most part the still wide spread bugs in the software and did everything they could to keep it afloat... and failed. So, they sold WP to Corel. Who has been silently slogging around with it ever since.

I think I still have a never opened copy of WP6 around somewhere.

[TomCat]

I'm with Shade on this one, Word simply was more user friendly, and it squashed the competition. End of story. Bill Gates will slide by on this when it goes to trial, he always does. I think it's a waste of money for our government to pursue, when we still have homeless and starving citizens who could use that money to get help.

[ttogreh]

There's the old southern Sheriff stereotype that may be applicable here. "well boy, if you aren't guilty of what I stopped you, you are probably guilty of somethin' else." It looks as though there may have been some bad behavior on the part of Microsoft, and some enterprise-killing incompetence on the part of WP, but it really doesn't matter.

Microsoft is a corporation founded on the ideals of a bunch of college dropouts that knew what the law was, knew what ethical behavior was, and knew the gap in between them was voluminous. In the early years, there was a great deal of bending the rules, or breaking them outright, and paying the offended parties off.

Microsoft is a giant of a previous era. Web-based computing offered by Google is promising to eat into the margins of Microsoft's businesses, Vista isn't exactly flying off the shelves...

The market will take care of Microsoft. The law is starting to catch up with the tech. In any event, I am rooting for WP, if only because I like an underdog...

[Head Wreck]

heh heh heh

wordstar. i remember that. i was still using it upto 1997 on a 8086 machine...

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=183

should have kept it as a curiosity. still remember having to load GEM desktop up into memory from 4 floppys (blue red green and yellow IIRC)