5 ms·

In terms of sheer productivity for an uninterrupted, expert user it's hard to beat the pre-Windows office suites. Yes it would take you weeks if not months to m

by zeteo 5y ago

In terms of sheer productivity for an uninterrupted, expert user it's hard to beat the pre-Windows office suites. Yes it would take you weeks if not months to master WordStar or Lotus 1-2-3 and it was quite expensive and not everyone in the company could have it on their machines. But those who did would leave today's Google Docs users in the dust for any data entry task longer than 15 minutes.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> In terms of sheer productivity for an uninterrupted, expert user it's hard to beat the pre-Windows office suites. There basically aren't pre-Windows office suites. There are pre-Windows standalone productivity software products, but agglomeration of this into office suites is mostly a post-Windows phenomenon.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  AppleWorks would beg to differ. And if GUIs aren't prohibited then GEOS on 8-bit platforms had a suite too.
- pxc 5y ago
  That's an interesting distinction. Do you think that maybe the agglomeration you describe is one of the reasons that post-Windows office tools seem to have worse productivity? I've never used old office software, but I could imagine that each office application being distinct allowed them to focus user interfaces on the exact use cases of each product, instead of trying to build on least-common-denominator metaphors that can be shared between office products of different kinds.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Do you think that maybe the agglomeration you describe is one of the reasons that post-Windows office tools seem to have worse productivity? I think (and there were some productivity studies I remember seeing when DOS w/o Windows, Win 3.x, and MacOS were all popular that seemed to support this, IIRC) that WYSIWYG is the problem, distracting from substance with presentation continuously.
- zeteo 5y ago
  There were some attempts but yes you're correct that pre-Windows you wouldn't normally get word processors, spreadsheets etc. from the same software vendor. (You could get them bundled by the hardware vendor/distributor sometimes.) I was using the term "suite" loosely, as in - typical combinations of software products (regardless of author) that were used in an office.
- dariusj18 5y ago
  Lotus had a whole suite of office products for DOS. Lotus Works was amazing.

by zeteo 5y ago

dragonwriter 5y ago

> In terms of sheer productivity for an uninterrupted, expert user it's hard to beat the pre-Windows office suites. There basically aren't pre-Windows office suites. There are pre-Windows standalone productivity software products, but agglomeration of this into office suites is mostly a post-Windows phenomenon.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
AppleWorks would beg to differ. And if GUIs aren't prohibited then GEOS on 8-bit platforms had a suite too.
pxc 5y ago
That's an interesting distinction. Do you think that maybe the agglomeration you describe is one of the reasons that post-Windows office tools seem to have worse productivity? I've never used old office software, but I could imagine that each office application being distinct allowed them to focus user interfaces on the exact use cases of each product, instead of trying to build on least-common-denominator metaphors that can be shared between office products of different kinds.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Do you think that maybe the agglomeration you describe is one of the reasons that post-Windows office tools seem to have worse productivity? I think (and there were some productivity studies I remember seeing when DOS w/o Windows, Win 3.x, and MacOS were all popular that seemed to support this, IIRC) that WYSIWYG is the problem, distracting from substance with presentation continuously.
zeteo 5y ago
There were some attempts but yes you're correct that pre-Windows you wouldn't normally get word processors, spreadsheets etc. from the same software vendor. (You could get them bundled by the hardware vendor/distributor sometimes.) I was using the term "suite" loosely, as in - typical combinations of software products (regardless of author) that were used in an office.
dariusj18 5y ago
Lotus had a whole suite of office products for DOS. Lotus Works was amazing.