Re: And they wonder why people switch...

From: srm (user_at_example.net)
Date: 09/03/04 

Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:05:03 +0200

Jim Trice wrote:
> One of my brother-in-laws is still using Win 3.11 on an ancient 486. He
> creates all the companies manuals and textbooks/course materials, and input
> to road traffic legislation, using Q & A Write, and an equally ancient copy
> of Corel. He's by far and away the most productive person in the company

Part of the reason for this might be that he knows the software so well
by now that it doesn't get in his way. A major problem with the upgrade
treadmill that M$ tries to force on customers (aside from the cost) is
that you never fully get to grips with all the wonderful gadgets in the
bloatware. Not long before we switched to Linux, I was running Office
2000 (I think it was - memory's hazy now). When we bought my wife's PC,
it came with WinXP and Office XP. Suddenly, Word was doing things in
subtly different ways, had new options and 'features' popping up all the
time. We spent hours and hours figuring out how to do things we already
knew how to do on the older system. That's entirely non-productive work.

Years ago, when I was still writing regularly for the IT press in the
UK, the generally accepted figure was that most people used about 20% of
a major application's features. The argument was that every user used a
*different* 20%, therefore all those features were justified. Even then,
I was a little dubious (took a *long* time to wean me off WordStar 4). I
bet that figure has dropped now and that there are features in packages
like Word that are used by so few people that they are statistically
negligible.

Windows thrives on wowing people with all its fancy gizmos when a far
more sensible approach would be to have a modular application in which
the main app has only the core functions and the rest are added as the
user needs. Word does this to a degree (ie, you can choose what speller
checkers, thesauri, equation editors, etc you want). But the basic
package itself is still way too bloated. Actually, even OOo isn't
entirely immune from this.

Anyone know of a simple, non-X text editor for Linux? I'd like something
with the simplicity and speed of Wordstar - or even of Kwrite. And don't
say Emacs or vi - I use emacs for scripts and things but wouldn't write
an article with it. And I hate vi's splitting of entry and edit modes.

@+
srm

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