But WordPerfect was late with its first Windows version, and then the bundling of Word with Microsoft Office on many PCs resulted in WordPerfect's sale - first to Novell, then Corel in 1996 - aimed at producing a competitive office suite. Early in the IBM PC era, Satellite Software's WordPerfect 4.X series supplanted WordStar as the most popular word processor, based largely on its macro capabilities, 'reveal codes' feature, and the company's reputation for high-quality free support.

The basic historic facts of the WordPerfect saga aren't in dispute. Why did WordPerfect - the word processing program beloved by so many loved in the DOS era - lose out to Microsoft Word? That has been the subject of some rather hot debate in my discussion boards this year, even when it was considerably off topic. I don't know why, but over the last year readers have several times brought up a topic that is a something of an historic gripe - actually, in terms of the technology world, one that is ancient history.

Word perfect reader