[TechGuy]

First of all, let me start out saying that I am not, nor have I ever been, a dedicated WordPerfect user in any way, shape, or form. Whether for better or worse, I've fed the monster that is Microsoft. I learned on Word, and have stuck through it all the way through Office 2000 (haven't gotten a chance to test XP yet, but I can't wait!). With that said...

A customer of mine, a law office, has been using Word Perfect 6 in DOS for several years (obviously, considering the version =). Anyway, I just upgraded all of their systems to brand new Pentium III 866, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive, etc etc... A big difference from the 486s they were on, right? Boy, was it ever! Sadly, I installed Corel WordPerfect 2002 (aka WordPerfect 10).I figured the learning curve would be <i>slightly</i> better if the new product had the same name as the one they used to use, even if they were going from DOS to Windows 98SE and from 6.0 to 10.0. Much to my surprise, the problems started immediately on the first day they used them. The systems keep locking up, giving GPFs (especially when printing), and generally running SLOW... but only while WordPerfect is running. Additionally, certain features of WordPerfect (like search, and file preview) don't work at all. I figured it was something simple that I didn't understand. After all, I *am* an Office user. I started searching around the newsgroup corel.wpoffice.office2002-other and found thousands of posts from people experiencing the same problem. For example:

Dear Corel Customers.

I usually do not do this but i made the mistake of running out and buying the latest product on the shelves. Figuring that the basic functions of it would still work. Not the case with WP 10. If you are smart and like not getting frustrated with computers dont buy this product. Some basic things that should work that do not. Printing - in WP 10 only if you like rebooting 10 times a day, printserver10 not responding - spool32 has caused an error in spoolss.dll - spools32 will now close. Guess what reboot time. And Corel technicians dont try to tell me to copy a shortcut in the start up folder it does not work. I have worked this product on windows 95, ME and 98 SE. It crashes on all 3 OS's all different speeds of machine, with variable amounts of RAM, no matter rather the shortcut to printserver100 is in startup or not. Slow - WP 10 takes 45 seconds to 1 minute longer to open then WP 9. Try to run a print macro to pull from different trays. What a nitemare, I have been on the phone with wonderful (insert sarcasm here please) Corel Tech Support - No help - I have left a post here - no help. I even emailed the tech from Corel the Macros in question close to a week ago now. Have i heard a response NO. This is because they dont know, they did not test this product. What happened to some of the fixes that were incorporated in WP 9? Did they forget about them with WP 10..... i.e. when adding a macro to a tool bar you get the long name version question again, which was fixed in a service pack with WP 9. So my suggestion is if you are really bored and have absolutely nothing better to do with your time, go buy a copy of WP 10 it will keep you busy for hours.

A dedicated WP user (more sarcasm)
John

I haven't decided what I'm going to do about this law office yet. I think I'll try back to WP8 or WP9 and see what happens. From what I've read so far, it should be a lot better than the most recent version.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my experience...