Re: OT: Death To Word, Final Word

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- On Mon, 4/30/12, flash  wrote:

>
> WinNT was MS's big leap into the corporate market, the first
> MS OS which
> came in server and client versions. Word came wrapped up in
> the bundle,
> along with PowerPointless (presentations), Excess (tables
> with
> calculations), and Access (db). MS knew they were up against
> corporate
> giants (Novell, IBM) and a vast pre-installed base. MS
> actually _paid_
> customers to dump their Novell servers and install MS-based
> ones. I know
> because I was doing Cisco training at the time, and I
> suddenly saw rows
> and rows of Novell engineers out of work, desperate to get
> retained as
> networkers because they had been chucked out of their server
> departments
> and replaced by MS-trained server engineers. Once
> corporations got
> hooked on the MS OS, they just took the MS-apps (Word, etc.)
> line and
> sinker. Aggressive marketing, not features or functionality,
> triumphed.
> That's my theory anyway.
>
> 
>

Yes, that squares pretty well with what I remember from that
period. You can't underestimate the power of marketing
muscle and leverage. Where are nearly all of MicroSquish's
erstwhile competitors in the basic business apps sector ?
In the boneyard, that's where. (Borland, anyone ?)

It has been noted here many times that the basic Menu-laden
design of Wurgh! was initially tailored to secretaries,
and office temps in particular. With that basic product
design in place, the program's feature set continued
proliferating like Kudzu. It was a radically different
market than the one Xy appealed to, but now it is just
about the only game in town. Even the wp in the free
alternative, Open Office, has basically adopted the Wurgh!-
style design. What else is there, apart from some techie
editors and whatever the Linux folks may be using ?
Or do Mac users have some other options ?


  Jordan