CrimLaw

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OFF POINT
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WordPerfect v. Word

Years ago I typed a wordprocessing program into my Commodore 64 and saved on my trusty, lightning fast 1541 (what an amazing improvement over tape). Along with an ahead-of-its-time dot matrix printer which emulated typeset Thus began my use of wordprocessing. When I switched from my C-64 to a PC (an evil day) I messed around with a number of wordprocessors before settling on WordPerfect. When Word entered the market I got it free on at least one computer and tried it but it was a far inferior product so I let it be.

A month or so ago I looked around my office to find the CD for Wordperfect in order to install it on a computer. It had disappeared. Being an enterprising sort I got on the internet looking for new wordprocessors and found AbiWord and OpenOffice.org. Both worked fairly well but neither would convert my old .wpd files. So I went out looking for the newest version of WordPerfect and could not find one at any of the local electronic or software stores. A little taken aback, I looked around and saw scads of Word packages for sale. I had been thinking of switching to Word anyway because everyone else has and no matter how many times I try to get people to use .rtf they just won't so there are always conversion problems when I get a document from someone else. Anyway, it's been years, Microsoft has surely made the interface better, fixed the old text manipulation problems, and developed a solid import/export feature for files from other wordprocessors. Surely . . .

NO, it has not. Today was the first day I tried to use it for anything significant and I swear the old wordprocessor I had for my C-64 was better than this cruddy wordprocessor. The pull down tables are still counterintuitive. Annoying lines pop up under all sorts of text as I write, indicating that I am doing something wrong and I cannot figure out what the program is upset about. The cut and paste feature is terrible; it keeps making me cut more than I intend to. This is a problem I remember from years ago in the first versions - there is no excuse for it still being in the program. The conversion of .wpd documents suuuucks. It is far worse than the conversions WordPerfect does of Word docs. Even when I go through the trouble to save my .wpd documents in .rtf and then import them into Word there tend to be some formatting errors. When I don't convert to .rtf first (usually because of graphics which .rtf loses) the documents come out terribly. The words are all there and some of the formatting sticks but the graphics come out green and purple. I should have known better. I think I'm going to have to make a trip to the CompUsa on the other side of Richmond because it was where I bought my last WordPerfect and if anybody has the program it should.

For the life of me I don't know why everybody has switched to this sub-standard program (other than Microsoft's exercise of monopolistic powers to muscle superior products out of the way). If you are starting out I suggest that you go get OpenOffice.org's program for free. It'll make your life easier as everyone is using documents saved in .doc format now and the program seems to actually be better than Word. As for me, I suspect I'll stay with Wordperfect until the company is finally driven under.