Marketing, stupid. WordPerfect's languid pace has given Microsoft Office a strong lead. But since Novell handed the company to Corel in March, WordPerfect has closed in on the software leader.
'When you walk in computer stores, you see the Microsoft Office box right next to Windows95,' Mike Dowd, Corel business development manager in Asia, said. 'WordPerfect sort of threw the baby out with the bath water . . . We did not have a lot of resources to respond to the Microsoft product.
'We've had a problem of timing. We're a year late.' A year late, but better for it. WordPerfect Suite, as the new office package is called, combines the multimedia and graphic capabilities of Corel, with the word-processing prowess of WordPerfect.
The new program, although similar to Microsoft Office, has won awards for its software and is bettering its competitor in several areas: Internet integration, cross-application capabilities and graphics.
Many programs on the suite have shared codes, which are similar applications such as spell or grammar check.
The new software package allows these shared codes, representing 33 per cent of functions, to work across the Quattro Pro, Presentations and WordPerfect programs and save valuable disk space. All the programs also use the same file manager, which simplifies the process of accessing different documents.