WordPerfect

A couple of items drew my attention: first of all Niels‘ link to an article that tells “it’s official to call Windows ‘broken'” and details the struggle of Microsoft’s executives with the problems ahead for its Windows operating system:

“It’s not going to work: Longhorn is so complex its writers will never be able to make it run properly.”

Closely tied to that item is an item about how Google has forced Microsoft to change its tactics from being a ‘innovative’ marketleader to follower. I can’t find that article, but I’m pretty sure you’ve seen and read the buzz around the two giants. And there’s more: just this evening a message filtered into the Postgres newsgroup where a reader loud up wondered why commercial databases (MySQL and MS SQL) either are too limited (technically) or have too many limitations (license-wise) and how these databases compared with Postgres itself.

“One of those was the MSDE from Microsoft. I started a conversion of a large customer only to find out that we hit the 2 gig limit before it even got installed (converted their current data). We started to look at prices of the full version of SQL Server and the pricing is going to put it out of reach for some of our customers”

So why is this posting titled Wordperfect?

Back in the early Nineties, Wordperfect was literally synonymous with wordprocessing. It was the only wordprocessor that apparently did things so good, that businessed started to focus and depend solely on documents based and written in Wordperfect. Naturally, these were the business that were hit first when Wordperfect’s marketshare tumbled from gigantic to marginal. We all know where Wordperfect is nowadays. We all know how far you get when you’re a certified Wordperfect Solutions Professional.

Reading the articles mentioned above the fold, I frequently wonder where Microsoft will be further up the road. It’s a company on a classic crossroad: is it going to continue the way it has always developed its products, or should it transform itself into a business that focusses solely on something else; content perhaps?

Either way, to go back to the Wordperfect phenomenon: being an IT professional should be about being pragmatic. After all, if your source dries out, you’re in the same situation as the millions of WP Solutions professionals.

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