The Death of WordPerfect

I used to be an avid WordPerfect user--from 4.2 until the Win98 version--I think it was 7. I wrote my dissertation in WordPerfect and even when I started working at Troy, which had Microsoft products, I intended to use WP. However, Suite 7 (or maybe it was 8) had terrible HTML capabilities--it screwed up the formatting for even simple documents. This lead to me to start migrating to Word. Even though I don't use Word for my actual web pages, it was helpful to be able to translate pre-existing docs to HTML (like syllabi).

It was a shame, as there were a lot of features (like the Reveal Codes ability) in WP that I highly preferred to Word.

My most recent computer purchase included a copy of WordPerfect 10, and I thought I would give it a try. However, very little had been improved over the years, and the HTML capabilities were still the same--which is a remarkable fact given the explosion in usage of the web since 1998.

I find MS products to be vexing and annoying, but the lack of WP's ability to compete is clearly their own fault--they have consistently done nothing to make their product competitive with MS Office, which is a shame.

WordPerfect Office Upgrade Breaks Little New Ground

The help files in WordPerfect Office 12 lack the usual "what's new" section touting the improvements in this year's release. I can see why it's missing: This release is the least consequential upgrade I've ever used.

I can't see why an owner of either the Office 11 Corel released last year or any reasonably current version of Microsoft Office would bother paying the $150 upgrade price (Win 98 or newer required) for this bundle of WordPerfect, the Quattro Pro spreadsheet and the Presentations slide-show editor.

Nor can I see too many home users lining up to pay $300 for the full release, not when OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) provides comparable utility and better Microsoft Office file-format compatibility for free.

What I do see: A suite that once dominated the market is slowly choking on its own irrelevancy. Aside from the people who will get this software bundled with their new computers, who will rush to buy WordPerfect Office 12?