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Author Topic: CPM & Wordperfect?!?  (Read 7255 times)

mschubb

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CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« on: May 14, 2013, 01:45:06 pm »

"Technology changes at breakneck speed, and one has to either keep up, or be left behind.   Now, of course if you
want to continue using CPM and WordPerfect, that's your right. Just don't expect to run it on a present-day CPU."


Really, Michael? This time you have gone too far.  

On behalf of deeply-misunderstood -- and much-maligned -- Wordperfect users, I protest.  Yes, like many of my minority, I started out in CPM.  (She was a beautiful, smoke-grey, suitcase-sized KayPro IV with two 5.25" floppies and 64K of RAM... yes KILOBYTES, not gigabytes or even megabytes.)    

But today, my fast-fingered brothers and sisters can run the latest WordPerfect X6 perfectly fine on our quad-core i7s.  Okay... most of us also use MS Word when we have to collaborate on a document with regular people.  But the simple truth remains, WordPerfect rocks it.

And we fervent few will only give up this program when you pry it from our cold dead hands.

To heck with the user guidelines.  Let the flame wars and ugly name-calling begin.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2013, 08:21:26 pm by mschubb »
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Peter McLennan

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2013, 06:01:36 pm »

I'll see your Kaypro (I had the 10MB hard drive version) and raise you an Osborne I running Wordstar.

(still in hand in case the betting gets heavy, a Vector Graphics S-100 Z80 machine running Memorite, SCOPE and ExecuPlan)
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Schewe

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2013, 06:36:37 pm »

I used to use Wordperfect...it sucked less than Word!
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Tom Montgomery

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2013, 08:26:19 pm »

TurboDOS forever!  Running on a Cromemco S100 machine.
I even wrote code with Wordstar. I think the keystrokes are still embedded in my spinal column...
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Les Sparks

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2013, 11:14:31 pm »

OK TRS-80 Model I using Electric Pencil.
Les
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2013, 11:35:54 pm »

I already posted a comment in the thread about Michael's take on the Adobe fracas. Yes, every computer in my house except one has WordPerfect on it, and it is VASTLY superior to MS W*rd  in every way. My main PC is an Intel Core I7 with 12GB of ram running Win 7 Pro, and I use WordPerfect almost every day.

I also keep a copy of MS W*rd on it, just to handle documents sent by others who don't know what a quality word processing program is.

And the one computer that doesn't have WordPerfect on it? It's my mother's old Kaypro with WordStar. Still runs, but none of us use it any more.

Eric M.

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Rhossydd

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2013, 01:38:48 am »

That quote annoyed me too.

There's a lot of good old software that continues to run fine on modern hardware and OSs.
I regularly use a little program for printing labels called Visual Labels, first released in 1996, not updated since then, not only runs sweetly here on W7 64bit and a i3770. but most importantly I've never found a better bit of software for quickly designing and printing labels.
I've built all my websites with Homesite 4.5, last updated in 2000 (before Adobe bought it up and killed it), it still does what I need perfectly.

It's curious that some people look dismissively at users of older software, even when it still works fine, but wouldn't take the same sort of attitude if you were shooting on much older camera.

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Paul Sumi

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2013, 02:18:52 am »

I'll see your Kaypro (I had the 10MB hard drive version) and raise you an Osborne I running Wordstar.

I'll go all in with a Palm M515 PDA synching to a Windows 7 PC via Palm Desktop under XP virtualization.

Paul

ps: I also liked WordPerfect better than Word.  Although I must confess I prefer Excel to Lotus 1-2-3.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2013, 02:20:59 am by Paul Sumi »
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EduPerez

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #8 on: May 15, 2013, 03:32:54 am »

I raise (lower?) the bet to a ZX-Spectrum: 16KB of ROM, 48KB or RAM, and standard audio tapes as external storage; the things I did with that machine...
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Rob C

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2013, 04:06:28 am »

As I can't speak the language, I won't write a poem.

Can't resist: I hate 'em all.

;-(

Rob C

daws

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #10 on: May 15, 2013, 08:13:36 am »

A sigh of sweet nostalgia for my Morrow CP/M running Wordperfect.

When was that, 28-29 years ago?

yikes.
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Alan Smallbone

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #11 on: May 15, 2013, 09:54:03 am »

I had an original IMSAI 8080 that I built from a kit, then heavily modified.... until I finally got an early PC.... but that was all a long time and no way in hell would I want to go back and revisit it all...although I still have it all. Need to sell it....  ;D

Alan
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JeanMichel

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #12 on: May 15, 2013, 09:58:51 am »

My two obsolete Canadian pennies:
Penny one: WordPerfect 5, in DOS 3.1 did (does) most of the stuff Word does and does it in 640k of ram.
Penny two: I still do all my accounting using NewViews, an amazing Canadian piece of accounting software from QW Page -- you can run a multinational on it -- and  I run it on a 486 with 640 k of ram (had 1 meg, but the stuff over 640 just became unreliable) and I print the reports on a Panasonic Raven dot matrix.  I do wish that they would have a MAC version but that is apparently a non-starter.
My definition of 'obsolete" : 'it works',

Jean-Michel
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Robert Roaldi

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #13 on: May 15, 2013, 10:56:25 am »

From what I have seen of Word use in offices, we may as well have stuck with DOS and WP 5.1, because no one (well, the number rounds to zero) knows how to use any of the new fangled features of Word past version 2.0. In the latest version on my desk, I can't even find the features I used to know about. For some reason, there's this new complex tool bar now and none of the stuff I used to find easily is within easy reach anymore. Why did they change it? I wrote software for 25 years in a previous life, I am not a techno-Luddite but I am starting to truly despise this stuff.

At home, I recently upgrade to Lion (my old iMac won't run Mountain Lion) and there is some basic Finder behaviour that changed in Lion. Why? There was nothing wrong with it before.

We long ago reached the point of sufficiency for the vast majority of people in desktop hardware and software, except for the most specialized of uses, much like with D-SLRs. My 90-year old mother could beenfit from a computer that was an appliance, like a toaster, but we don't dare buy her one because the constant upgrading would drive her and her family batty.

Maybe the new tablet-type thingees are supposed to address that computer-as-appliance need, I don't know, I hope so, and maybe one day I'll buy one.
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Craig Lamson

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #14 on: May 15, 2013, 11:23:17 am »

From what I have seen of Word use in offices, we may as well have stuck with DOS and WP 5.1, because no one (well, the number rounds to zero) knows how to use any of the new fangled features of Word past version 2.0. In the latest version on my desk, I can't even find the features I used to know about. For some reason, there's this new complex tool bar now and none of the stuff I used to find easily is within easy reach anymore. Why did they change it? I wrote software for 25 years in a previous life, I am not a techno-Luddite but I am starting to truly despise this stuff.

At home, I recently upgrade to Lion (my old iMac won't run Mountain Lion) and there is some basic Finder behaviour that changed in Lion. Why? There was nothing wrong with it before.

We long ago reached the point of sufficiency for the vast majority of people in desktop hardware and software, except for the most specialized of uses, much like with D-SLRs. My 90-year old mother could beenfit from a computer that was an appliance, like a toaster, but we don't dare buy her one because the constant upgrading would drive her and her family batty.

Maybe the new tablet-type thingees are supposed to address that computer-as-appliance need, I don't know, I hope so, and maybe one day I'll buy one.

My mom and MIL are both rather computer illiterate...well my MIL is way better than my Mom.   In any case the Ipads I got them both were a godsend and they use them like crazy.  Add an Airprint printer and they need little else.  Got them Iphones too to replace the androids and they are in heaven.   Better than sliced bread :)

BTW, Word 97 was WAY better than it is now.  Why the change????
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seanconnery

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #15 on: May 15, 2013, 04:41:10 pm »

Young pups!
How about a Timex Sinclair run by BASIC and tether to a TV?
Then 2disk IBM PC with colour monitor for $6500 using Easy writer II.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #16 on: May 16, 2013, 12:11:31 am »

Young pups!
How about a Timex Sinclair run by BASIC and tether to a TV?
Then 2disk IBM PC with colour monitor for $6500 using Easy writer II.
That sounds similar to my Commodore 64. That gave me an excuse to get our first color TV set. It had some sort of word processing program, whose name I forget, from an outfit called "Batteries Included." It's one shining feature was the best ever version of Frogger. The IBM PC version somewhat later was considerably weaker, especially in the sound track.


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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #17 on: May 17, 2013, 09:04:50 am »

It's been a lot of years and I cannot remember the name of the guy who wrote an assembly language text processor that used the WordStar commands.  It ran under DOS and if IRCC required only 64K of memory to run.  It could be configured in a lot of ways and I used as my editor for writing program code.  I probably have it somewhere on an old floppy disk.

On the off chance that Google is my friend, lo and behold it's still around:  https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/Home  Wow!
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VidJa

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #18 on: May 17, 2013, 05:37:17 pm »

and none of you are using Emacs and LaTex, shame on you.  ;) (ok, ok i'll admit, it runs on a virtual machine running FreeBSD under ,heaven forbid Windows 8, but that is just because Adobe doesn't have a native FreeBSD LR version)
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telyt

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Re: CPM & Wordperfect?!?
« Reply #19 on: May 17, 2013, 05:56:42 pm »

Friden 5610.  Punched paper tape & flexowriter.  Will it read a DNG file?
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