Text 41379, 120 rader
Skriven 2008-01-02 21:47:00 av JAY EMRIE (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av ALAN ZISMAN
Ärende: Why did WordPerfect Go Wr
=================================
You are right on the ball, Alan. With my oft fuzzy memory I had
forgotten much of what you have said.

Jay


AZ> AZ>> Jay and other WP fans may be interested in the article and
discussion AZ> JE> on how WP AZ> AZ>> lost its #1 spot in the word
processor world to MS Word:


AZ> JE> IIRC, MS (Bill Gates) offered schools MS Word at a very reduced price
AZ> JE> and in many cases free. When those students went out into the real
AZ> JE> world guess what they wanted to use!

AZ> JE> Word Perfect didn't even try to compete
AZ> JE> therefore lost the battle.

AZ>Certainly Microsoft offered-- and continues to offer Word (and the full
Office
AZ>suite) at much lower educational license rates-- just as they offer it at
AZ>cheaper rates to large enterprises buying bulk licenses... but I think the
AZ>story is more complex than that-- OpenOffice.org is available for free, but
my
AZ>school system insists on buying a district-wide license for MS Office.

AZ>It takes a generation for students to enter the job market AND reach a point
AZ>where they exercise any control over purchasing decisions. In this case,
AZ>Microsoft was able to take over the market for word
processor/spreadsheet/etc
AZ>software in a relatively short period of time.

AZ>The big changeover happened in the period 1993-96 (more or less); at the 
AZ>beginning of the 1990s, (Win 3.0 was released in 1990), DOS was still the
AZ>standard for corporate personal computers, with WordPerfect 5.1 the most
widely
AZ>used word processor, some version of Lotus 1-2-3 the most widely used
AZ>spreadsheet, etc.

AZ>These programs cost $495 each (list price).

AZ>In the early 1990s, a couple of things happened:

AZ>1) In a relatively short period (1990-1995) Windows 3.0, followed by 3.1,
AZ>followed by Win 95 were released, and by the end of that period, had
replaced
AZ>DOS on both home and (more slowly) business computers as the operating
AZ>environment (avoiding questions of whether they were 'real' operating
systems
AZ>on their own).

AZ>2) Both WordPerfect and Lotus were relatively slow in releasing usable
Windows
AZ>versions of their software-- both because they were at first focussing on
OS/2
AZ>versions, and because their initial Windows 3.x releases were buggy, slow,
and
AZ>late to market-- by comparison, Microsoft had versions of Word and Excel for
AZ>Windows in the late 1980s-- I used them with Win 2.0. They became available
for
AZ>Win 3.0 with only minor patches, within a month or two of the Win 3.0
release--
AZ>and because these weren't version 1.0 of the product, were better Windows
AZ>products than either WordPerfect or Lotus's first releases for Windows.

AZ>Moreover, Microsoft had been the #1 software company for the Mac for a
number
AZ>of years already, and had much more experience writing GUI-software than
either
AZ>Word Perfect or Lotus had. (Both had written Mac software, but hadn't put
much
AZ>effort into it, and neither had a top-selling product in the Mac market,
which
AZ>Microsoft did).

AZ>3) Early in the 1990s, MS bundled Word + Excel together as MS Office-- both
for
AZ>Mac and for Windows, with a list price MUCH lower than the cost of either
Word
AZ>+ Excel purchased separately or Word Perfect + Lotus 1, 2,3 (or similar)...
in
AZ>my opinion, this was the key factor. Again, both Word Perfect and Lotus
AZ>responded (eventually) with their own Windows office suites, but neither was
a
AZ>powerful contender to MS Office-- Word Perfect's suite bundled WP with
AZ>Borland's Quattro-Pro, Lotus bundled 1-2-3 with Ami Pro word processor. In
both
AZ>cases, these were products that were considered 'tier 2' products (though I
was
AZ>a fan of Ami Pro, personally).

AZ>By about 1994 Lotus and Word Perfect got to the point that their core
products
AZ>were good Windows programs, it was too late-- by then Microsoft had pretty
AZ>solid control over the office suite marketplace, with the exception of some
AZ>niche markets... for years, for instance, most law offices stuck with Word
AZ>Perfect which offered some features that made it a better fit for their
AZ>specialized needs.

AZ>Microsoft DID offer good deals to education-- though Word Perfect, for
AZ>instance, let schools (and non-profits) freely license older versions of WP
if
AZ>a donor upgraded to a newer version-- something my school was happy to make
use
AZ>of in the late 1980s-- but that's just another way of saying Microsoft
AZ>out-marketed its competition, something that is neither illegal nor immoral.

AZ>-- 
AZ>==================================
AZ>- email: alan (at) zisman (dot) ca
AZ>- website: http://www.zisman.ca
AZ>(running on Mac OS X)

AZ>--- Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Macintosh/20071031)
AZ>Newsreader (1:123/789.0)                                                    
                                               

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