4 ms·
Version 4 got me through the first couple years of college. My freshman year I actually had a steady stream of people coming into my dorm room to use it on my
by femto113 6y ago
Version 4 got me through the first couple years of college. My freshman year I actually had a steady stream of people coming into my dorm room to use it on my PS/2. Eventually I switched from English to Math and moved on to vi and the various roff markup tools and then LaTeX, but I think what ultimately killed the magic of that generation of WordPerfect was the change in keyboard layouts that moved the function keys from the left side to the top. Before that when combined with Ctrl, Alt, and Shift there were 40 commands available just a pinky reach away, and it came with a cheat sheet card that fit neatly around them.
- femto113 6y agoI guess I'm not the only one who misses those keyboards, they go for around ~$300 on eBay[1] [1] https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929 https://www.ebay.com/b/IBM-Model-F/175690/bn_55189929
- WorldMaker 6y agoIBM spun out their keyboard division decades back when they they spun out printers (into Lexmark). The current inheritor of the keyboards is Unicomp (having bought it from Lexmark/IBM): https://www.pckeyboard.com/ https://www.pckeyboard.com/ It's a bit cheaper to buy from them than to pay for an antique on eBay. Also, there's a wave of mechanical options from more recent companies like Das Keyboard or the various DIY kits with choose your Cherry switch adventures.
- tssva 6y agoVersions 4.1 and 4.2 got me through the first couple of years of college also. I briefly updated to 5.0 but quickly reverted to version 4.2. I have never been as productive in a word processor as I was using WordPerfect and a Model F XT keyboard.