Re: College question

[JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM]

In a message dated 97-05-06 17:56:14 EDT, damonpc -at- sfsu -dot- edu (DAMON PATRICK
CARROLL) writes:

<< 1)   Do you use Word>>
Yes (6.0)

 <<2)   Why>>
It's what all my clients have used.

On my one and only staff job as a TW, we used WordPerfect 5.1.  WordPerfect
was the only standard word processor that had a prayer of displacing Word and
so far as I can tell they missed the boat by moving to Windows too late.
 Mostly it appears out of loyalty to the installed base for 5.1.  Even their
Windows port is full of 5.1 artifacts.  Most irritating if you're used to
Word, which was integrated seamlessly into Windows (the DOS version is a
mighty distant cousin.)

 <<3)   What are some examples of why you use word >>
I presume you mean 'where' or 'for what' and not some variation on the
preceding question.

Just about everything.  I've worked with one actual desktop publishing tool
(Ventura) and found it complete overkill for most things you'd do in a bank
or similar corporate setting. (I've never had to do a complex newsletter,
which I'm told is where you see the need for more powerful tools.)

I've done direct mail, product sheets, press releases, scripts, business
analyses, user and technical documentation, a nightly bulletin, bank
procedures, course supports, articles, standards documents and even forms in
Word.  (Complex forms are actually an unbelievable nuisance this way and I
would never have decided on my own to do them in Word. But the requirement
being made, it was doable.)

In terms of working environment, my main clients were a small software
company, a bank, a city agency and an ad agency.  Completely different in all
respects except one: they all use Word.

There are undoubtedly better tools for specific tasks, but if you need a good
general tool for writing and pretty basic desktop publishing, it's your Swiss
Army knife. Other tools that do approximately the same thing have basically
lost the marketing wars. So - from the user's point of view - it really
doesn't matter how good they are.

Jim Chevallier
Los Angeles
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