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Review by David Field
WordPerfect and me go back a long way. I used it in the early 1990s and learned enough about it that when version 6 was released I was contracted to write half a book on the DOS version and half a book on the Windows version. I remember that the program was so buggy that within a week they sent me 6.0a, which still didn’t clear up all the faults.
This was the beginning of the end for WordPerfect as the leader of the PC word processor market. Microsoft had released Word when Windows 3 first appeared, and by the time WordPerfect had released a Windows program, Word for Windows was already on its second version.
WordPerfect’s late arrival to Windows applications was because the company believed that Windows would not be as popular as it turned out to be. This was a belief common in the industry. Also, Microsoft established Word by introducing Microsoft Office and offered the suite of these programs at very low prices to people who installed Windows on their machines.
It’s been 20 years since this happened and WordPerfect has never regained its popularity. But lots of WordPerfect users stayed loyal to the company, and today, owned by Corel, it continues. Over the years WordPerfect has improved and with the addition of the Quattro Pro spreadsheet program and WordPerfect’s presentation software, it can offer a great deal of what Microsoft office brings.
Some years ago Microsoft released a partial version of Office for students. Because of the popularity of Word the product went on general sale for noncommercial uses. This is the market that WordPerfect aims at, but with one important difference - a very low price. It brings the Office suite to anyone who can afford under $100.
Yes, you don’t get the Microsoft suite but you do get a set of programs that will open and save documents in Microsoft’s own format. In many ways the programs are very similar, so if you have some experience with Microsoft’s suite you should have little trouble transferring to the WordPerfect product.
There are some features in WordPerfect that were groundbreaking 20 years ago. The most well-known of these is the Reveal Codes feature. Rather like HTML text has special codes which control the formatting of the following text. All word processors have this method of controlling formatting, but most hide this from you and presume you will notice the difference between, say, normal and italic text.
This Reveal Codes feature was started in the DOS days, when you couldn’t see how the text would be formatted. When Windows word processors let you see exactly what you would get, this became less important, and by now I think we’re all able to see the formatting rather than checking the code.
Similar features are found in the other programs in the suite. In many cases they can be invaluable to certain kinds of users especially those that have been using WordPerfect Office for a while. Although I haven’t used WordPerfect I found little difficulty in using it and I would suggest that if you don’t worry about knowing how to use another word processor you would find it helpful.
Even though WordPerfect Office costs so little, it allows you to install it on up to three computers. That means that you get a complete installation for little more than $20, which compares well to the individual pricing of these applications in the early 1990s, when just one would cost you close to $500.
So is this right for you? If you’re hoping to get employment you’ll probably be better off by buying Microsoft Office Home and Student so that the transition to a work environment will be a lot smoother, because they’ll almost certainly be using Microsoft Word. But if you are not worried about this degree of compatibility then by all means pay half the price of Microsoft Office and get the WordPerfect Suite.
You’ll get the power of three professional-level applications along with a bunch of fonts and other programs. You can’t argue with that.