CompuServe Messages

Excuse me? Feldercarb! Did WordPerfect just now get around to looking at the bottom-line? Or was this revelation about "the revenues recieved are not nearly enough to finance a full-fledged development effort" discovered when it was learned that Commoodre would not finance this effort? Your company must really think the average Amiga owner is stupid. Contrary to your company's belief their are many Amiga users who do serious work with their systems and also just happen to believe in a "better mousetrap" that is the Amiga. I am not some ex-c64 game pirate who wants to write a few notes to his 'way kool friends in europe'. I am a person who has control over software purchasing decisions for an entire campus, and yes, I own an Amiga, and yes, I have owned, worked with, and programmed PCs. Heck, I have even used WordPerfect on a PeeCee! See I am part of the "mainstream". All I ever wanted from your company was a decent port of a decent (read not the best) word processor. What do I get instead? I get a buggy program and a whole lot of BS from sales droids. "WPCorp PC Testing" has gotta be a sales droid position because I believe that WordPerfect Corp. has never hired anyone to test their amiga products. Don't believe? Why don't you try to install WordPerfect's latest under AmigaDOS Release 2? Heck, try it under 1.3! Lets take a trip down memory lane shall we? 1 I supported WordPerfect with my hard earned cash, when the program should have never been released. It took nearly a year and a half before the program became even remotely stable. Even when it became stable it did not follow what little established standards that did exist on the amiga. It was crude as a cob, and still is today. Rule: When you are in business sometimes it is important to provide a quality product. Sometimes name is not enough. Oh yes, you will sell a few to the suckers who buy for a name (me!) but believe me when I tell you I did nothing to help WordPerfect sales after I had the "Word Perfect" experience. Does that come to you as a surprise? 2 WordPerfect claimed that they had recovered their _entire_ development cost in the first few months of release. Rule: There are a lot of people who buy a product believing a company is crediable based on a name and a good history on another platform. 3 WordPerfect released WordPerfect Library Rule: Hey if we can fool them stupid Amiga owners once, hey we can do it again. Well that was the plan, wasn't it? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! Guess what!? You didn't get me a second time! 4 WordPerfect is the company that started all of this stuff about doing a feasability study on doing the WordPerfect 5.1 port not anyone else. They did agree to go to AmiExpo and show it, they pulled a 'no-show' without even an explanation. Rule: In a time of recession, why not suck milk out of all the cows we can… Hello Commodore, yeah, about that WP 5.1 wouldn't it be neat if…..??? 5 I contacted WordPerfect when they were doing this "study" and was given the strong impression that many had called and written and it looked "good" for an updated WordPerfect. The comment it "looked good" was said by the WordPerfect represenative not me. Why do a study if the "the revenues received are not nearly enough to finance a full-fledged development effort"? Was there just enough funds to do half-baked development effort? Just what was the thinking? Did WordPerfect stumble on a copy of 'vi' source that they thought they could port over and label WP 5.1? Rule: Get them Amiga Users hoppin'! If they are hoppin' they will ping loud and clear, Commodore will have to finance the port, after all it would really hurt Commodore if WordPerfect abandoned the Amiga. 5 I happen to know one of the beta testers, and was _told_ that he/she had been contacted to do beta testing for the new version. This was two months ago. He/She was told that the program had just finished alpha and was a port of the Mac version. Rule: Make the beta tester hopefuls believe something exists, that doesn't. Translation: Add a bit of gas to that there fire. The more Amiga users pinging about WP the more likely Commodore will opt to pay for it. ——–In my opinion, WordPerfect owes the Amiga marketplace an apology. They blew it from day one. They hired PCers to do the "port". They released it before it was ready. They didn't even have the sense to become registered Commodore commercial developers! You didn't think that tidbit had slid from my memory did you? I am also aware that Commodore pushed to have WordPerfect released before it was ready. See, I am trying to to be fair. However, even after this early release bug fixes did not arrive for some time. The Amiga marketplace is quite big enough to support a good product from WordPerfect. Don't believe it? Try producing a good product… I certainly have been patient enough waiting for one. Let me tell you about your latest upgrade you offered Amiga owners: 1 The Install program is broken, it guru's my machine(s) when I ran it. I had to finish the install by hand. 2 The fonts in the printer control program are broken under 2.0 if you decide to use another font. Clue: Most people who use 2.0 no longer use topaz, time to get rid of a null in a text structure I guess. If you want to force user to use topaz, specify it. A NULL in the text structure under 2.0 gives you the system default font, which believe it or not is usually not topaz, and get this, it is usually bigger than 8 points! No, the reason the WordPerfect product and WordPerfect Library did not succeed on the amiga is simple. The program is a poorly done port of an IBM program, and done by a company that has lost its edge. Let me go further to say that I believe that this whole WordPerfect 5.1 study was designed to get funds from Commodore. It was probably thought by the bean-counters at WordPerfect that if they stirred the pot a bit on WordPerfect 5.1 for the Amiga, they probably could talk Commodore into sinking a few million into WordPerfect Corp. Commodore for once, wisely said, "forget it…". So instead of telling the truth or just letting it go you (your company) decides to rub our noses in the fact that a _big_ IBM software house has _dropped_ our beloved machine. Well sir, good ridiance to you and your company. Let me tell you that I am going to effect your bottom line on your PC and VAX version of WordPerfect. I grant it will only be a few hundred copies, but a person has got to do what he has got to do right? From this point on I will never authorize the purchase of WordPerfect for any of our PC labs on our campus, and will never put a version of WordPerfect on the VAXen I administrate. No, it won't put you out of business but it will give me satisfaction, and hey, after four years I think I deserve a bit of satisfaction, don't you? I am also immediately purchasing ProWrite from New Horizons. They support their product, and hey they have stuck it out for long enough. I should have done this long time ago. Your company sir, is lying.