Re: Ah, those were the days, going offtopic with WordPerfect Re: ping Floyd

"Wandering" <amore.dei@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:g597ck$q27$1@xxxxxxxxxxx


WP had a huge learning curve. Any such product develops a serious cadre of
very loyal users. Once you've climbed the hill it all seems easy, and you
aren't eager to climb another. That was the flaw that they failed to
address and further exacerbated by a dreadful marketing strategy. It was
mainly that strategy and Microsoft recognizing it and adopting the
opposite strategy that put them out of the market. Make no mistake, MS is
a marketing powerhouse, not a technology leader.

All the while WP was advertising the hundreds of thousands of dollars they
were spending every month on their 800 number help lines to help newbies
climb that awesome hill, Microsoft was building usability labs, and
sitting newbies down with unfamiliar hardware, giving them a task to
perform, watching what they tried to do to make it happen, and largely
adjusting the software to do it that way. The WP strategy is certainly a
classic, if not the worst, marketing blunder in history. And all the
successful software was so because it was successfully marketed. The
technological leader is never the market leader.

Other comments here about lag in adopting Windows, superior programs to WP
and such, certainly contributed to the quite rapid demise of WP once Word
and then Office hit their stride. A major marketing force was the sub
trend of the increasing tendency toward desk-top publishing and the
affinity of the market of for what-you-see-is-what-you-get. WP tried to
ignore it or belittle it, and MS played to it. Few marketers ever failed
by riding the trend. Bucking it is nearly always disastrous.

Something to think about. Techies are feature freaks, but most customers
couldn't care less about features - they want benefits. WP kept selling
features, and MS sold benefits. MS won't lead in the techie market that
way, but they will in the vastly larger user market. In the end, it
doesn't really matter which was the better product technically, because
the outcome is what it is.




Much of what you say is true. But both products had a learning curve.
The WordPerfect Corporation had a good organization. The demise of WP began
with the sale to Novell and started accelerating when Corel treated it like
a step-child. Meanwhile,
MS gave Office to college students and its ISVs while providing free
training. At the same time a Corel ISV paid more from Corel then the
customer did at the local superstore. Corel also imposed such outrageous
charges for its training materials that few were interested.

Enough rant from me. Let's get back to photography, since I am sending this
weekend at the annual NECCC conference at UMASS, Amhert. :-).


--
Peter
Even dot net has a lower learning curve than Photoshop.

.