Microsoft Word 5.5 And 6.0 In-depth DOS Review With Pics (2018)

Summary

Microsoft, 1990, 1993 MS-DOS $450 *This review entirely written using Word 5.5/6.0 for DOS A new apple tastes sweet, rots at home (A history) 1983 would see the humble beginnings of a word processor that proved quite unpopular for the longest time. Microsoft Word started out on the Xenix and MS-DOS operating systems. It would be touted as a "what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)" word processor, although it was not. From what I can gather, Microsoft was willing to make this claim simply because the ASCII environment they used allowed for bold and italic text changes to be seen on screen. This was not a true indication of what would be seen when printed, nor did it offer variable fonts and sizes. A tiny little white lie told to disparage the most popular text based word processor at the time, WordStar. The false hype was of little use, Microsoft Word would never become a competitor on Microsoft's own DOS platform. For something that started in 1983 and was never big in DOS, it may cause some to wonder how the program even survived long enough to eventually become the most popular word processor. Enter Apple and their new Macintosh computer. Bill Gates himself told his designers to focus on the Mac, and in 1985, following in the footsteps of MacWrite and other Mac word processors, Microsoft Word would finally become WYSIWYG. It would soon become the top selling word processor on the Mac, and despite the Apple market being much smaller than the PC's, would outsell the DOS version of Word as well. ^Word 5.5's interface Whether you love or hate Word, love or hate Microsoft itself, in the end you have Apple to thank (or curse) for this programs survival. Forever taking the backseat to WordStar and WordPerfect in DOS, I do wonder if Word wouldn't have just been discontinued before its acclaimed Windows release if not for the success of the Mac version. Did the Mac success teach Microsoft any kind of a lesson in terms of what they should try to accomplish with Word? Yes an...