Microsoft Word 5.1: The Apex of Word Processing

angkor writes "'Word 5.1 is 13 years old in 2004. Many people still swear by it. Powerful features, stable application, without bloat. Nirvana by Microsoft. It's been all downhill from there...' I always thought WordPerfect 5.1 was pretty good as well. I still use it alongside my OfficeXP."

Swear by?

[paulhar]

or at...

Strange...

[Psychor]

Odd how people swear by Word 5.1, when all I seem to manage with Word XP is to swear at it.

asdf

[professorhojo]

I gave up on word the day I clicked on a menu and an hourglass appeared. :(

fact

[Barbarian]

MS Word jumped from like 2.0 to 5.1 to "catch up" with Wordperfect.

Heck, vi is bloatware!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been all downhill from sed if you ask me.

Ancient technology

[AKnightCowboy]

Personally I really like Microsoft Office 2003 Professional. It gives me the power and flexibility I need without the hassle and incompability of the competitors' solutions.

/holds up Office box and smiles

"Microsoft Office 2003 Professional, Where do you want to go today?"

Bah! Bet it can't...

[lacrymology.com]

As a casual user, I simply cannot live without the ability to insert MediaPlayer G2 controls into my correspondence... therefore 5.1 will not work for me.

-m

No impossible

[MemoryDragon]

Word 5.1 did not have clippy... the most important thing which was ever integrated into a word processor.

Old Testament Wrath-Of-God type stuff

[stinkyfingers]

The best word processor ever created for a Mac was written by Microsoft? What's the I see outside my office window?

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!!!!!!

Re:Strange...

[nocomment]

I'd swear by openoffice, but I'm still waiting for it to finish loading.

Re:Interesting - 5.1 the magic version number?

[lacrymology.com]

Gator eWallet version 5.1 was the pinnacle of scumware.

-m

Re:Heck, vi is bloatware!

[uucp2]

After reading this, I just had a horrible vision of ASCII Clippy integrated into vi.

wordperfect 5.1

[snead]

We had wordperfect 5.1 installed in all of the computer labs that I worked in back at university. If you took the floppy out of the drive, it was toast and virtually unrecoverable. Everyday, at least one person would complain about losing their paper or some such. Many a session was spent in complete fear, rivulets of sweat dripping from my face, as one of the rather large football players stood angrily over my shoulder waiting for me to retrieve their data.

It got to the point where I'd ask them if they'd taken the disk out of the drive. They'd say "yep" and I'd say "Yeah... Don't do that". ...Well not the football players... you know, the people I could take (english majors mostly).

So, not fondly remembered.

-k

Re:asdf

[lacrymology.com]

"I gave up on word the day I clicked on a menu and an hourglass appeared."

Well, Word has come quite a long way since then... they've upgraded to a really cool spinning rainbow disk now.
-m

Vigor?

[lintux]

and menus responded with vigor

Vigor? Word 5.1 had Clippy already? That's impressive! (Screenshot [sourceforge.net] / Home page [sf.net])

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Strange...

[Alan]

I'd swear by openoffice but I'm still waiting for it to finish compiling. /gentoo

Re:Spell check

[Charles Dart]

Being a horible speler I love that with osx it spell checks your online form enteries. I used to rite them up in a word procesor frist so I could sple check. Now I just hit [apple][shift}[;] It works great!

Re:Heck, vi is bloatware!

[AKAImBatman]

After reading this, I just had a horrible vision of ASCII Clippy integrated into vi.

Ask, and ye shall receive [sourceforge.net].

Mwhahahahaha, mwhahahah, HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

(Okay, so he isn't ASCII. Deal with it.)

Re:I'm going to lay down a challenge...

[abh]

Yeah, if you can make Word 5.1 (which is a Mac-only product) run on Windows, I'll give you more than just mod points...

Somewhere in the world...

[CFBMoo1]

Geek 1: EMACS!
Geek 2: VI!
Geek 1: EMACS!
Geek 2: VI!
Geek 3: Oohh Word 5.1!
*Geek 1 and Geek 2 give the look of death to Geek 3. Large heavy objects suddenly get propelled at Geek 3.*
Geek 1: EMACS!
Geek 2: VI!
Geek 3: Vi'macs.... *WHUMP as he passes out from a concusion*

Re:No impossible

[michael path]

I see you're trying sarcasm. Would you like to:

o Change me to a dog or cat
o Integrate me into your web browser
o Realize sarcasm is lost on the /. crowd

Re:fact

[DavidBrown]

So, Apple changed the numbering system on their OS. They went from OS-9 to OS-X, completely skipping OS's A through W.

Goddamn hypocrites.

Re:Word: nice -- if and when...

[Petronius]

it does refuse to do what I tell it sometimes
Ask Clippy. Nicely.

Re:asdf

[Otter]

I gave up on word the day I clicked on a menu and an hourglass appeared. :(

In fact -- is there any particular reason why, in XP, when I right-click on an Excel sheet tab and select Insert, it takes at least 30-60 seconds to bring up the appropriate dialog? It's instaneous in Office X and I assuem something must be misconfigured.

But, yes, Word 5.1 was the asme of word processing. Certain features have improved since then (table drawing and continuous spell check, for example) but on the whole I'd love to have it back.

Two words - Task Pane

[Cumstien]

I agree, why does MS think I want a separate window, bar, or pop up for every action performed on a document. I have spent more time with Office XP hacking the registry and customizing toolbar buttons to avoid their suppossed intelligent features.

Next their going to introduce different degrees of italics and bold.

You have selected bold. How bold would you like it today? Please adjust the thickness, shade and sharpness sliders below

For Christ sakes just give me a solid word processor with out the needless tweaks.

Re:Interesting - 5.1 the magic version number?

[schemanista]

What's a matrixed channel?

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrixed channel is. You have to hear it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes...

You must be new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

No self-respecting geeks admits they use anything other than vi.

I remember Word 5.1....

[myrdred]

It ran like a champ on my 33mhz PowerBook 190.

Now, someone remind me what the system requirements are for the current versions of Office and Open Office?

Re:Ancient technology

[AKnightCowboy]

yes, but how much did you pay for it?

I paid $20 for it at the university bookstore. I bought it at the same time I picked up Windows XP Pro (also $20). Now, don't get me wrong, that's a highly subsidized campus license agreement program which is ending soon... that reminds me I need to go pick up some more software! ;-)

CLIPPY!!!!

[Kpt Kill]

It looks like your posting on slashdot! Would you like some help:

• Bashing Microsoft
• Promoting Open Source
• Making CowboyNeal jokes

*Stop* _hurting_ my EYES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement is so unbelievably painful to parse and even look at that it could only have been written by Clippy.

Damn Mascot

[karniv0re]

Even if Word were the best program around for text editing, I'd still refuse to go near it if I saw Clippy smiling at me. I have nightmares about that damn thing trying to help me. Make it stop! Make it stop!

Re:asdf

[TheLink]

Maybe MS has stolen Openoffice code? ;)

Re:Two words - Task Pane

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like you managed to disable the spell-checker too.. ;)

Re:CLIPPY!!!!

[AntiOrganic]

It looks like you're posting on Slashdot! Would you like some help:

• Understanding the difference between "your" and "you're"