From: John T. Chapman <jtc1@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: Word 5 recommendations? (Re-post)
X-Xxdate: Mon, 12 Oct 92 16: 59:29 GMT
Nntp-Posting-User: jtc1@cornell.edu
Organization: Office of Computing and Statistical Consulting
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d12
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 15:49:54 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.142149.14877@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> Geoff Bronner,
geoffb@coos.dartmouth.edu writes:
>In <1992Oct10.193526.17983@cfa203.harvard.edu> mcn@cfa203.HARVARD.EDU
(Charley 
>Noecker, Prec Astron) writes:
>
>>In the last few weeks, it seems there were quite a few gripes about MS
>>Word version 5.  I wonder if there is a consensus on whether (a) it's
>>mostly a good product, worth upgrading to, or (b) I'm better off with
>>v.4 until v.5.01 comes.  Comments?
>
...

>There will be no v5.01.
>
>-Geoff

I think he's referring to Word v5.1, which is scheduled (rumored?) for 
release in about December '92. This is supposed to be a nearly complete 
port of the Word for Windows version feature-wise, adding the 'easier 
tables' feature, along with bulleted text, a 'smarter' configurable icon 
tool bar, etc. Don't quote me on this, but it's also likely to share the 
Microsoft Help system and maybe even Spelling dictionaries that Excel 4.0 
uses. (Hey - there's an idea - shared resources!!!)

It will still lack WordBasic; in fact, I've heard one rumor that 
WordBasic is unlikely to ever make it out on the Mac version of Word. 
This annoys me as it was one of the major things I was looking for in 
Word 5.

Anyway, there's also talk of the next version (Word 6 or somesuch) which 
is supposed to be a complete ground-up rewrite using a common code base 
for both Mac and Windows versions. This is scheduled for sometime next 
year (probably summer, but your guess is as good as mine).

As to Charley's question, is it worth buying Word 5 right now? Well, 
depending on how accurate the release date for 5.1 is, I'd say probably 
not - wait the couple months and get the new release. I'd hate to see 
people screwed because they missed the deadline for a free upgrade. (Oh - 
a comment on that: The upgrade fee from 5.0 to 5.1 is rumored to be a 
much more reasonable amount ($20-40?) compared to the $130 it cost to go 
from 4.0 to 5.0)

I agree with Geoff on the system concerns, though. Unless Word 5.1 gains 
a huge speed improvement over 5.0, Word 4 is still a bit faster than 5.0 
and, depending on the need for features, is probably good enough for a 
while. In any case, Word 5's Grammar and Drawing modules are certainly no 
selling points and although the File Conversion modules work really well, 
they put a premium on hard drive space.

Sigh. I wish Microsoft (and Claris and...) would take a cue from T-Maker 
and other similar designers and start producing packages that didn't take 
5M space and run slow as molasses. WriteNow 3.0 doesn't do everything
that 
I need it to, but from what I've seen, what it *does* do it does 
incredibly fast and fairly well, while still able to fit on floppies. (Ok 
- the dictionary takes a bit of space, but that's to be expected.)

(Hell, this brings me back to the Apple II, Commodore and Timex/Sinclair 
ages, when programmers had 64K Ram and maybe a couple 100K disk/tape 
space. Great programs, though.)

Later!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  John T. Chapman                                     jtc1@cornell.edu
  Office of Computing and Statistical Consulting
  Cornell University - College of Human Ecology
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