HP drops Microsoft for rival Corel

Financial Times ^ | August 27 2002 0:56 | Scott Morrison and Paul Abrahams

[TechJunkYard]

|

HP drops Microsoft for rival Corel

By Scott Morrison and Paul Abrahams in San Francisco

Published: August 27 2002 0:56 | Last Updated: August 27 2002 0:56

Microsoft, the world's biggest software group, on Monday suffered a blow to its most important business, when Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest personal computer company, selected a rival software package for its consumer PCs.

The move follows a decision last week by Dell Computer, the number two PC maker, to replace Microsoft software. Both companies said they would offer WordPerfect productivity software from Corel of Canada instead of Microsoft's Works, a scaled-down version of its top-selling Office software.

Microsoft last financial year generated $9.6bn of its total $28bn of revenues from desktop software. Microsoft currently has more than 90 per cent of the office productivity software market.

During the recent anti-trust hearings in Washington, PC makers said that Microsoft had been abusing its monopoly in operating systems and productivity tools, and in particular the way it licensed its products to PC makers. Gateway alleged that Microsoft favoured certain PC manufacturers both in financial and other means.

HP and Microsoft were not immediately available for comment.

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[TechJunkYard]

Hmmm.. I think MS owns a smallish part of Corel, too. Would this be likely to help sales of MS Office? Are these two OEM's just shooting themselves in the foot?

[thegreatbeast]

No, Bill Gates wants MS to lead the industry in every way. He would not (as far as I know) play any shell game. As long as MS controls the OS market, it will always be a player. WordPerfect is just reclaiming a title they used to have.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I really liked Wordperfect for DOS. When WP for windows tried to become just like Word for windows I just gave up on WP. If I had wanted Word, it was available for free.

[dts32041]

You mean there is an office package out there besides Word Perfect, I din't know that.

I Mean I have being using it sinc Word Perfect 5.1.

[sigSEGV]

LaTeX owns all of 'em.

[Utah Girl]

As a former WP employee, I am glad to hear that some companies are turning away from MS products. However, I do not think WP and Corel will ever regain the market share they frittered away.

[maro]

Yep. So HP customers will just have to procure Word some other way...I don't think it will hurt MSFT in the pocketbk much.

[Michael Barnes]

screw 'em all...vi DAMNIT!!

[Michael Barnes]

mwahahahahaha!!!!

[Utah Girl]

I love vi, use it all the time to write scripts.

[TechJunkYard]

That's it -- use vi and write your docs in html.

[irv]

I love vi, use it all the time to write scripts.

I also use it to write letters and short stories. Unfortunately, for submitting the stories, MS Word format is frequently required. That's why I downloaded OpenOffice.

[Utah Girl]

I cheat on documents. I use WordPerfect and save it in Word format. The company I work for now has MS products as a standard, but there are many rogue copies of WP floating around...(all legal, just not company standard.)

[ikka]

Cracks are appearing in the MS wall.

Combine these cracks, with OpenOffice (which handles Word97 docs BETTER than WordXP does), and the change in the way employee stock options are expensed, I wonder when the wall will fall?

[RightWhale]

Microsoft's Works

This product was never worth a bucket of warm spit.

[irv]

(Microsoft's Works) ... was never worth a bucket of warm spit.

You're too kind. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a panicked call from some user with a brand new computer saying they want to write a letter and can't get the bundled software to save it for them, or some such thing.

Yes, it's easy for those of us who've been using computers for decades, but Works manages to confuse newbies and/or lose or corrupt their files, EVERY time.

[First_Salute]

Bump.

[B Knotts]

Bah.

M-x all-hail-xemacs

[B Knotts]

I almost forgot:

M-x all-hail-emacs

Obsolete function. Use `all-hail-xemacs'.

[Michael Barnes]

I love vi, use it all the time to write scripts.

Don't tell my wife, but I think I just fell in love!

;)