The Microsoft marketing event that began to sour my opinion of the software monopolist was the launch of Word 2.
I received a fax from Microsoft Canada's marketing firm, inviting me to an author's seminar. Microsoft wanted input from authors on how we created documents. I spent some time putting together a presentation that listed four types of document production I used every day:
1. Quick notes -- I use Notepad.
2. Email - I use Eudora.
3. Lightly formatted documents, like letters -- I used WordPerfect at the time.
4. Heavily formatted documents, like desktop publishing -- I use PageMaker.
Myself and about a dozen other writers (book authors, computer paper editors, etc) gathered in a conference room. As I recall it, Microsoft employees and marketing people listened for a while as we talked about how we created documents.
After a while, the head Microsoft guy got a smarmy smile on his face, and then introduced the brand-new Word 2 for Windows. Each of us was given our own copy, and then sent home.
Microsoft marketing had no interest in authors' problems; they wanted to seed the market with their brand-new Word 2 among opinion makers. The fax asking for our input was a ruse to get us to show up at the meeting.
I did use Word 2 for a number of years, because WordPerfect for Windows was a disaster. I now use Atlantis.
Fast forward to 2005: I notice that the next release of Word is centered around major tasks -- Quick Text Formatting, Write, Page Layout, and so on -- mimicing the content of the presentation I made to Microsoft Canada more than a decade ago .
Comments