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MS-DOS

I still have an unopened box of WS 7 for DOS. Word processing is strange--WYSIWYL (what you see is what you like). Back in the CP/M days, I used WordStar a lot, starting with 0.90. And there were some very good word processors for CP/M--say, Spellbinder or Memowrite. But most of them were just fancy typewriter replacements. In particular, it took awhile for Wordstar to be able to handle proportional spacing (I have an old patch product that could almost do it right with WS 3.30).

Then the "document composing" software came by and gave everyone a re-think. You had PageMaker (which was one reason that pubs people bought Macs) and Interleaf (a good reason for buying a Sun Workstation). Very complex, but the result was to die for.

Word for Windows was pretty good, but I quit updating mine in 2000. Other packages such as AbiWord were just as good--and were free--and didn't carry the burden of registering each installation.

My primary platform today is Ubuntu x64 and it works fine. For programs that require Windows, there are solutions that work just fine. The popular base is mobile, not desktop--it's a different world..
 
Agent Orange said:
What's not to like with WP? If you were an incidental hack typist, like me for example, 'reveal codes' possibly could save you from some overtime.
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You are right!

In fact, when I first used Word, I so missed "Reveal Codes" that I almost freaked out & gave up on Word (which is basically what I use now, and have since I wrote an 800+ pg book with Word in '96).

But at first use, Word was frustrating in it's hidden formatting, and I started out by hating it for reformatting things on me, with no clear way out!

Amazing what the human brain can get used to, and actually like, in the end!

gwk
 
Chuck(G) said:
I used WordStar a lot, starting with 0.90. Word for Windows was pretty good, but I quit updating mine in 2000. Other packages such as AbiWord were just as good--and were free--and didn't carry the burden of registering each installation.
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AbiWord is great-I'm constantly amazed by the free offerings these days. I am beginning to use AbiWord & Libre Office, on my Linux box, and Windows 7 box, respectively. I personally can't stand this "move to the cloud" on MS Office (and even the foot dipping by all of the others, trying to compete-needlessly).

Both of the freebies work great, and do more than is needed by almost any writer.

Oh, and by the way -- So true -- It IS a different world...

gwk
 
LaTeX. Works everywhere. Beautiful results. Use whatever text editor you're the most productive with. Concentrate on content, not fiddling with the layout issues all the time. The best thing I ever did for documentation was to switch over from "wysiwyg" to LaTeX.
 
Heh, I remember doing a lot of documentation with Unix troff. You can produce some nice-looking stuff, but back in the day, it took many iterations (read "paper") to get things just right. LaTeX may be wonderful for original material, but most often, I have to work with something that originated with another party, most likely in Word.
 
IBM and Microsoft made a deal so that they can put Microsofts MS DOS on their computers in Boca Raton.

And coincidentally I was born in Boca Raton, FL....
 
SomeGuy said:
In public media anyway, the term "MS-DOS" didn't seem to appear until shortly AFTER the release of IBM PC-DOS 1.0, when Microsoft decided it would license versions to other third party OEMs.
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I think Microsoft decided that before they made the deal with IBM, otherwise they wouldn't have given IBM a non-exclusive OEM-license in the first place (pretty sure IBM would have wanted an exclusive license, or even buy the whole product).
I'm not sure if Microsoft knew about IBM PC clones beforehand, but at least Microsoft seemed to be aiming for a CP/M-like situation where multiple 8088/8086-based systems could run (a port of) the same OS.
 
krebizfan said:
MS BASIC provided with the IBM PC was what allowed MS to expand like crazy.
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I think it's more about MS BASIC powering virtually every other microcomputer system as well, in the late 70s/early 80s, making MS BASIC more widespread than DOS initially, which was limited to x86-based computers.
 
griffk said:
Microsoft's office applications only took off as a leader after Office was released and the Windows GUI was mature enough to be usable and stable. Before that, they were also-ran's, and MS made most of their $$ from OS licensing.
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Yes, I think that is down to two factors:
1) MS made sure that it was easy to migrate to Office, by having good import/export functionality for other documents, and even being able to use the keyboard mappings of other software.
2) The other players severely dropped the ball when they had to move from DOS to Windows. Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows were very late to market, and quite poor products compared to the 'slick' MS Office.
 
Scali said:
I think Microsoft decided that before they made the deal with IBM, otherwise they wouldn't have given IBM a non-exclusive OEM-license in the first place (pretty sure IBM would have wanted an exclusive license, or even buy the whole product).
I'm not sure if Microsoft knew about IBM PC clones beforehand, but at least Microsoft seemed to be aiming for a CP/M-like situation where multiple 8088/8086-based systems could run (a port of) the same OS.
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Most of the versions of the DOS negotiations indicate that MS did not want to be the supplier of the low end OS. They sent IBM towards DRI and then tried to get IBM to buy SCP's OS directly. MS buying an OS which is licensed out to various customers seems to have been a last resort to save the BASIC contract while keeping MS from losing too much money on the deal.
 
krebizfan said:
Most of the versions of the DOS negotiations indicate that MS did not want to be the supplier of the low end OS. They sent IBM towards DRI and then tried to get IBM to buy SCP's OS directly.
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Is that so?
Because the only version of that story I know is that IBM's first choice was DRI, but because those negotiations fell through for some vague reasons (something about signing an NDA), IBM went to Microsoft instead, who sold them QDOS before they technically bought the rights from SCP yet. Then they bought QDOS and hired Tim Paterson without telling them that IBM was their big client, so they got QDOS for a bargain (SCP later sued MS because they concealed that fact, which MS settled for a million dollars, so that part is probably true. Given the massive success of MS-DOS, it's still a great deal, even though it is about 200 times more than they initially paid :)).
 
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Jack Sams (formerly of IBM) tells various versions of the story of how MS offered IBM the chance to buy QDOS outright and IBM declined the offer. Since Jack Sams was included in the IBM team, his account has a good chance of being accurate.

Note: MS did not get QDOS for a song. MS paid SCP about the same amount that DRI was charging for CP/M. Everybody got surprised as the IBM starting selling many millions of units a year instead of the expected success of a mere 250,000.
 
krebizfan said:
Jack Sams (formerly of IBM) tells various versions of the story of how MS offered IBM the chance to buy QDOS outright and IBM declined the offer.
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Well, that is true. 'Offered the chance' is not to be taken literally afaik. Microsoft simply pointed IBM to SCP and their QDOS (perhaps it started out as some informal thing? IBM was already working with MS for BASIC, perhaps they just asked: "Do you know of any OSes we could use for our PC?". MS was not in the OS-business at that point). IBM *could* have bought SCP themselves, but decided to let Microsoft buy them.
Why exactly? Who's to know? Perhaps because IBM figured that a small player like MS could get a much better deal than IBM approaching QDOS directly. So perhaps IBM was in on the whole deal/strategy here. Perhaps even the architect of this scheme.

krebizfan said:
Note: MS did not get QDOS for a song. MS paid SCP about the same amount that DRI was charging for CP/M. Everybody got surprised as the IBM starting selling many millions of units a year instead of the expected success of a mere 250,000.
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They did.
The story goes that MS first got a non-exclusive license for $25.000 to port QDOS to the IBM PC. Then they bought all the rights for $50.000, so $75.000 total.
Given that IBM proposed $250.000 to DRI for CP/M, this is indeed 'a song' in comparison, even if we don't include actual sales figures.
And DRI turned them down because they wanted a royalty-based scheme instead, which would have brought in even more money based on actual sales. So it is not 'about the same amount', it's only a fraction of what DRI was charging for CP/M.

Edit: An interesting quote here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_DOS
"The reasons were internal. We had a terrible problem being sued by people claiming we had stolen their stuff. It could be horribly expensive for us to have our programmers look at code that belonged to someone else because they would then come back and say we stole it and made all this money. We had lost a series of suits on this, and so we didn't want to have a product which was clearly someone else's product worked on by IBM people. We went to Microsoft on the proposition that we wanted this to be their product."
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That may be a reason for IBM to let MS own DOS. Aside from the time pressure mentioned earlier, which precluded IBM developing something in-house.
 
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krebizfan said:
Any $250,000 figure had to include development.
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That is what IBM offered (not what DRI demanded) because DRI was reluctant to sell to IBM, who they saw as 'the enemy', DRI being a microcomputer company, IBM being 'big iron'.
The fact that DRI sold CP/M for less to other customers doesn't enter this story. They would have charged IBM much more, because IBM is just a much bigger player.
Likewise, had SCP known that IBM was interested in QDOS, they would have charged a lot more as well (hence the lawsuit).
 
Of course when the "IBM PC" was released IBM offered either Dos or DRIs product to be shipped for use with the systems. Of course there was a significant price difference between the two.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
Likely, the IBM guys were taken aback by the reception they received from Dorothy Kildall... :)
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Likely, the IBM guys were just being "IBM Guys", and intimidated the Sh** out of Gary & Dorothy. I knew them both and they were great, easy going people, but not "top-notch" cutthroat business man/woman...

gwk
 
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