Review by Steve Dietrich

I was introduced to WP long before there was Windows or Word. WP is command rather than mouse driven and far more efficient and elegant.

We use both word and WP in the office only because we need to communicate with other firms. I give our people the choice of using word or WP for internal communications. Over the last decade or so most of the employees came to the company knowing only word. A requirement was that they learn enough WP to be proficient in both.

The outcome is that almost every employee scoffed at WP at first and then learned how elegant it is and in the end adopted it as the word processor of choice. My guess is that the output is 150% - 200% of word. Of equal importance is the vastly reduced probability that the word processing software will suddenly get an overwhelming desire to reformat your document, thus trashing hours of work.

Most of the senior partners at law firms acknowledge that the only converted to Word under duress, clients wanted documents in that format and new employees were raised on Word. Part of the problem is the the DOJ as part of the Microsoft antitrust settlement years ago let them pay their fine by giving free softward to schools . It’s like allowing a drug dealer to settle the case by giving free samples to the school kids.

If you frequently work with outlines it’s even better. Microsoft’s random re-formats can simply trash hours of work. After you go back to the prior save you are still under the threat of the random formatting monster.

If you do a lot of writing and are willing to learn more of the keystroke commands this is a great leap forward. The keystroke commands also reduce wear and tear on the wrist.