Crappy for free is still crappy
According to this ZDNet story, Microsoft is going to release MS Works as a free or ad-supported program or service or something. Not too clear on the details.
That’s "release" as in, "Release the sick deer back into the wild where it can become part of the circle of life… as dinner for a mountain lion."
My poor father has used the bass-ackwards, clapped-up, nasty word processor part of MS Works for, like, 20 years. Or it seems like that. To the kid in charge of technical services for the family. I want to put the guy back on Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS, ’cause at least that program worked and didn’t eat so much of his memory that he couldn’t run his screen-saver without going Blue Death.
I have a definition of a user of a free or (god love ‘em for trying) ad-supported version of MS Works: a sap who’s never heard of Google Docs or Open Office.
Fairness Note: I don’t mind MS Word. The new 2007 version does some cool stuff. But MS Works should be allowed to drift off into the ocean on a chunk of ice to be with its ancestors.
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The funny thing is that Microsoft’s clearly known for some time that Works’ word processing module is worthless. Thus the retail presence of Works Suite for years: Works plus the full MS Word for $100. It was by far the cheapest legal way to buy Word (and we picked it up for my wife’s cheap notebook for exactly that reason), even if you never opened Works itself (which she never did…)
Now that there’s a legit $140 home version of MS Office 2007, of course, Works Suite is pointless –and off the market.
Walt: Exactly. I bought the MS Office 2007 for Home. More than the changes to Word alone, I was pretty impressed with how the UI is now much more similar for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. And the upgrades to Powerpoint are significant.
I do still miss Word Perfect 5.1, though… *sigh*