bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) (10/06/89)
I'd like to add my voice to that of a previous poster who was happy with Microsoft Word. I used to be a Word Perfect fan, but switched to Word because I found it much more intuitive and easier to use. It's very different than most other PC word processors in that it's very object- oriented (you select some text and then do something with it) but you get used to that very quickly. I think I'm in a good position to compare the "big two" (MS Word and Word Perfect) because I used both extensively and I still help my father a lot with Word Perfect. The bottom line is that they are almost identical (MS Word 5.0 and WP 5.5 or whatever the latest version is) if you look at the features sheets, but I find that I am producing much more advanced documents than people I know who have Word Perfect simply because it's so much easier to do in Word. I always had to fight with Word Perfect to get it to do a lot of fancy things. Besides, the educational price on MS Word is really great -- I bought it in version 4.0, and they let me upgrade to a full version 5.0 when it became available. I can assure you that the educational version of Word is *exactly* the same program as the full version. (I assume from your 89$ price that you are considering the educational version.) Of course, I'm just a satisfied customer :-) (-: Brad Brown :-) bradb@ai.utoronto.ca
mark@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Mark Turner) (10/07/89)
I prefer Word. Although both programs have their flaws, I found Word easier to learn and use. Plus, mouse support is built in. WordPerfect is very function-key oriented, which makes it a bitch to learn unless you want to stick templates all over your keyboard. Once you learn it, I guess it's not so bad, but then that's true of any program.
bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) (10/13/89)
drv@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (dennis.r.vogel) writes: >Now that Ka Chin Wong has found his word processor and I have learned >a lot about the differences between Word and WP, I have a followup >question. Without rehashing the Word/WP comparison, which of the >two would be better on a Toshiba T1000 laptop without a mouse and >without a hard disk or the RAM card? I`m one of those really dedicated Word fans who thinks anyone who still uses Word Perfect is letting themselves in for more trouble than they have to. HOWEVER, I have to admit that Word is not the fastest program in the world, and Word Perfect is a very fast word processor. My experience with the two programs suggests that running Word on anything less than an AT with a reasonably fast hard disk is painful, while Word Perfect remains respectably fast on PCs. (Could still be painful with a floppy... I once set someone elses machine up for Word Perfect on a RAMdisk with two floppies, and that worked very well...) (-: Brad :-)
austin@bucsf.bu.edu (Austin Ziegler) (10/13/89)
On 13 Oct 89 14:47:08 GMT, bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) said: >> drv@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (dennis.r.vogel) writes: >Now that Ka Chin Wong has found his word processor and I have learned >a lot about the differences between Word and WP, I have a followup >question. Without rehashing the Word/WP comparison, which of the >two would be better on a Toshiba T1000 laptop without a mouse and >without a hard disk or the RAM card? >> I`m one of those really dedicated Word fans who thinks anyone who >> still uses Word Perfect is letting themselves in for more trouble >> than they have to. HOWEVER, I have to admit that Word is not the >> fastest program in the world, and Word Perfect is a very fast word >> processor. My experience with the two programs suggests that running >> Word on anything less than an AT with a reasonably fast hard disk >> is painful, while Word Perfect remains respectably fast on PCs. >> (Could still be painful with a floppy... I once set someone elses >> machine up for Word Perfect on a RAMdisk with two floppies, and >> that worked very well...) I am a satisfied WP user and I do have complaints about other word processors, but I think that WP would be the better for a laptop. The reason for this is that it is almost entirely based upon the function keys, and laptops in general have the function keys *real* close to the rest of the keyboard. If you are used to other programs, some keyboard redefinition will be necessary, but it is not a big problem to learn how to use this feature because WPCorp includes three sample keyboard definitions. I don't think you will have any big problems making WP 5.0 the word processor you want. Austin Ziegler austin@bucsf.bu.edu 700 Commonwealth Avenue Box 2094 Boston, MA 02215
johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) (10/14/89)
In article <89Oct13.104618edt.10808@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) writes: >>Without rehashing the Word/WP comparison, which of the >>two would be better on a Toshiba T1000 laptop without a mouse and >>without a hard disk or the RAM card? > >My experience with the two programs suggests that running >Word on anything less than an AT with a reasonably fast hard disk >is painful, while Word Perfect remains respectably fast on PCs. My wife uses Word on a Z-181 portable with two floppies, and finds it quite usable. The Z-181 has a switch to speed it up from 4.77MHz to 9MHz at some loss in battery life, but we haven't felt the need to use it. She's not usually editing terribly long documents, but after the admittedly slow startup it feels pretty snappy. I have the impression that the latest version of WP has gotten so big that it doesn't fit on floppies any more. Is this true? I can fit Word and its spell checker and DOS on a 720K floppy. -- John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 864 9650 johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {ima|lotus|spdcc}!esegue!johnl Massachusetts has over 100,000 unlicensed drivers. -The Globe
gjh@galen.acc.virginia.edu (Galen Hekhuis) (10/16/89)
In article <1989Oct13.231208.3773@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes: >In article <89Oct13.104618edt.10808@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) writes: >>>Without rehashing the Word/WP comparison, which of the >>>two would be better on a Toshiba T1000 laptop without a mouse and >>>without a hard disk or the RAM card? Just to add to the confusion, and throw in another name (that I have not yet heard), I personally use (cringe) Wordstar 4.0. I own a Toshiba 1000 on which I run the venerable Wordstar, which also has an option to load entirely into RAM, if you want. While it doesn't have all the nifty features of some of the other programs, it handles wordwrap rather well, and has a non-document mode I find of more use than either Word or Word Perfect who require you to use some sort of "saving-translation" into an ASCII format which may or may not be exactly what you want. I do all the clever formating, italics, boldfacing, etc. on a desktop machine equiped with a mouse, hard disk, gorilla, Weber carb, etc. While you may think this is just additional information, YOUR MORTAL SOUL DEPENDS ON TAKING MY ADVICE... -- Galen Hekhuis UVa Health Sciences Center Box 449, Jordan Hall Charlottesville, VA 22908 (804)982-1646 gjh@virginia.edu ...it's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt..." -Camelot
weekley@oldcolo.UUCP (Bob Weekley) (10/23/89)
>drv@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (dennis.r.vogel) writes: >>......... Without rehashing the Word/WP comparison, which of the >>two would be better on a Toshiba T1000 laptop without a mouse and >>without a hard disk or the RAM card? Well, the granddaddy of tham all WORDSTAR was specifically designed to run in a limited memory environment, and does it very well. (This is the original, but tuned up, version; NOT WS-5, I'm speaking of.) ---------------------- Robert R. Weekley @ oldcolo.UUCP THE OLD COLORADO CITY ELECTRONIC COTTAGE | Standard | 2502 W. Colorado Ave. #203; C.S., CO 80904 |Disclaimer| (719) 632-3391 [8-N-1]; 632-4848 [voice] "Freedom is the opportunity for self dicipline" -Dwight D. Eisenhower ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -
markxx@garnet.berkeley.edu (10/25/89)
>......... Without rehashing the Word/WP comparison, which of the >two would be better on a Toshiba T1000 laptop without a mouse and >without a hard disk or the RAM card? I have used WordPerfect 5.0 on a T1000 with no problems. The advantage that it has is that is uses the function keys and cursor movement keys for a lot of the editing, and it is very fast on the Toshiba keyboard (in my opinion the best laptop keyboard- those laptops that force you to hit an "fn" key for PgUP etc. should be outlawed :-) If you are interested in how 5.0 can be used on the T1000 let me know. Mark