

Gates back on stand in Utah in $1B antitrust trial - pwg
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j_hBtA1v_-WRM_604OBn5ZEr62hg?docId=a850a50f1a544cc18d64da1ce2c8b8d4

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jroseattle
I was a sys-ops admin for a 30-person department in a bank back in 1994-1995.
We had DOS 6.0 workstations as well as Win 3.1/3.11 desktops and used
WordPerfect 5.0 (F5 Reveal Codes, I felt so powerful!) among other brands
(Quattro Pro, Harvard Graphics, Paradox.)

When Win95 came on the scene, we were hesitant at first -- let others figure
out the kinks -- but we were rolling out new desktops within 6 months. We had
also been waiting for a Windows version of WordPerfect. The DOS version was
ok, but it was awkward running it in Windows.

So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, after I don't know
how long, we got our hands on WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows. It royally sucked.
The WP folks had spent approximately zero time imagining their product in a
Windows environment -- GUI, mouse click, that kind of thing -- and instead
just pushed their F-commands into a menu system. It didn't flow at all, and
our staff complained mightily.

So, we took a look at MS Office (I think it was version 4.x or something
around then.) I didn't like MS Office, and knew we would have re-training
issues (especially going from Quattro Pro to Excel). Nonetheless, we decided
to give it a try.

Staff loved it. Not jumping-up-and-down loved it, just that it let them do
their job quite easily. The analysts in our department raved over Excel,
however. And personally, I could rid myself of Paradox, which seemed to
dislike me more than others.

Summary: it's a small sample size, but from where I stood WordPerfect
basically blew it. I can't speak to the MS/WP relationship, but I can without
a doubt say that WP didn't put any thought into their product. Why they
released their Windows version, I'll never know.

Was MS a tough competitor? Of course. Did they make it difficult on WP to
provide their version on Windows? Maybe. But being completely unimaginative
about the application and workflow? That's nobody but WordPerfect's fault.

~~~
colton36
F3 was Reveal Codes, iirc.

~~~
jroseattle
Duly noted. Wikipedia says the actual keys were Alt-F3.

Seems forever ago.

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cgranade
From the article: "[Gates] also said there was no viable alternative to the
Windows operating system in the market at the time [1995], which would mean
Novell does not have an antitrust case."

That statement is only even remotely true if one interprets it to mean that
there was no alternative to Windows at the time that ran on the same hardware.
Macintosh computers were alive and well, no?

~~~
jamesgeck0
For the curious, this is what installing RedHat Linux 2.0 looked like cera
1995. Ah, rawrite; I don't miss you at all.

<http://www.viddler.com/explore/pdweinstein/videos/5/>

~~~
palish
Hah, wow: <http://i.imgur.com/appZl.jpg>

"And you'll see listed here are a number of boot images. Each one of these
boot images contains the configuration of a kernel that will _probably_ match
one of your systems. Let's go ahead and use the DOS program 'edit' to view the
images.idx file now."

<http://i.imgur.com/V0PX0.jpg>

"Here it shows in the left hand column the last four numbers of the boot
images of the files we just saw earlier. On the right side is a description of
the type of system we need to install it onto. For example if you look on the
first line it'll show that it has IDE/ATAPI or SCSI. In other words if I take
the boot image 0000 then I will be able to utilize the boot image on a system
that has an IDE CD-ROM drive."

Heh. It sounds like installing Linux was as easy as 0001, 0002, 0003...

~~~
kristopolous
I actually did this, back then, a few times (I was a pipping teen in the day).
It was enormously fun; absolutely loved it; all on a 486-dx(2?)

Recompiling the kernel manually was something you _just did_ ; it was
expected. Downloading a bunch of source code and compiling the dependencies
and managing everything yourself; also completely ordinary.

The best thing was going between Pillbox, Yggdrasil, Mandrake, Slackware(!)
... those were the days!

There were two floppy disks that you would boot from, the `Boot` and the
`Root` if I remember right. If you had a system up and running you could use
dd, otherwise there was a DOS tool that would do as much. Interestingly, this
was when the first thing you'd see at boot was

    
    
      LILO
    

The LILO above was actually a complex diagnostic result. Getting something
like

    
    
      LILILILILILILILI
    

was possible

or

    
    
      LIL
    

They all meant a bunch of different things. If you got the full LILO you would
be like "phew, it worked". Otherwise, you use your rescue floppy (or the one
you used to install, had to remember to keep those around) and figure out what
was wrong.

CDs originally weren't bootable and lots of BIOSES didn't know how to deal
with them. There was a standard that went out called the "El Torito" or
something that basically talked about how CDROMS would be bootable. I think
Windows 98 had this; in fact, I think it came out of Redmond (but I haven't
done my homework in the Goog)

So in 199x, even if you had a fancy bootable CD, you were still making floppy
images, then inserting the CD when instructed to. In fact, I still have a box
of floppies just in case I need to deal with hardware pre-1999 ... which is
becoming less and less relevant (I think I used one last in 2006). Then again,
I used a 5 1/4 in 2003 ... so I guess it's worth keeping around another 4-6
years.

The worst memory I have is when I found out just how bad swap could be. I had
to compile the NetBSD kernel on a laptop I had (IBM 360C, active color 640x480
display, NiCd battery, 2.88MB floppy, SCSI disk, huge docking station with
speakers ... this is about 1999 (more of 1999 below)) and it had all of 8MB of
RAM. I had to recompile the kernel to make use of an early wireless (which
felt like pure magic) PCCARD I had (mind you, 16 bit, not 32-bit CardBus) and
the kernel took 4.5 days(!) to compile. In fact, I remember starting it
Christmas eve before eating dinner and it went on through Christmas day and
then a few days after that.

I had mastered screen by this time so I was able to see that the machine was
really chugging away. The reason was that the compiler used up all of my RAM
and was hitting swap. After that I upgraded the machine and the new
compilation took 40 minutes.

40 minutes then, seemed like getting DSL for the first time and then clicking
on that 10MB file and thinking "What is going on here? A whole megabyte
downloaded right in front of my eyes? In mere seconds?! I am never going
outside again".

I long for these exciting days. The mobile world has it, that's about it.

More about 1999;

Speaking of 1999, two other big things, the BeOS 5 Demo, booted from windows
and was awesome, then there was the "Bootable Floppy Challenge" which was done
by QNX ... it was quite impressive in the day.

------
jamesbritt
Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262170>

------
eco
My brother is on the jury. He won't talk with me about it until it's over
though.

