This is Lotus’s long awaited entry into the mega word processing market. Lotus WORD PRO 96 Edition for Windows 3.1. I say mega because, like MS Word and Word Perfect, WORD PRO needs lots of memory and space. Installation requires 15 floppies, a CD is available free from Lotus, 35 Meg of hard drive, at least 8 Meg of Ram, a 486 or higher, VGA monitor and Windows 3.1 or higher. A stripped down version can be installed for 15 Meg.
My system is a 486 DX100 with 12 Meg and a very fast 850 Meg hard drive. Installation is very easy with only one glitch. During beginning initialization you must complete both Name and Company. If there is no company then put your name again. It will not install until you have done this. Installation should take between 20 and 60 minutes depending on your system. Back-up copies are no problem. The trend is toward software which you cannot copy (as with the new MicroSoft 95 stuff).
The Users Guide ain’t. It clearly states on page one that “This book is not a user’s guide”. It introduces “time saving techniques”, “advice about what is required to get your work done” and “pointers to detailed how-to information in online help”. There are those of you who remember a program coming with a volume of encyclopedias, well, this has one book about the size of the old installation book. As is the latest trend, the help section is huge and excellent. I haven’t used Word Perfect since I abandoned it at 5.2, but you will probably find the help section to be similar to WP 6+. It is like Word’s help except to search using key words you must first (each time WORD PRO is opened) load this library. It says it takes a few minutes, but it loaded in less than one minute for me, so it’s not as bad as it would seem.
One thing to note. If you want a printed Users Guide. This can be done prior to installation. During installation, click on the “help” button in the first window where it appears, you then click on file and print any or all of the help section.
When first opened up WORD PRO offers a tutorial called “The Tour”. For those visually addicted windows types like myself you’ll love it. I found it to be very similar to MS Works tutorial. There are nine icons covering nine different areas. Each tells you how long it takes. There is a control box in the bottom right. When you open each icon you will be presented with tutorial windows. You have no control over these windows! They are automatic and the only way to control how fast they cycle is with the “pause” control in the control box. If you hit the rewind button (the control box looks like the controls on your cassette player) you go all the way back to the beginning. So, if you miss a window you either miss it or you start that tutorial over.
WORD PRO has plenty of fonts and sizes up to 72 point. For those of you who are confused by what all those numbers mean. Each number is 1/72 of an inch. Therefore, 9 would be 9/72 or 1/8 inch. This means you can go up to one inch tall letters with WORD PRO.
If you are familiar with any of the modern word processing programs you will find this both familiar and fairly easy to use. The basic methods used to perform tasks haven’t changed terribly since Word Perfect 5.1 and MS Word 2.0. If this is your first entry into the world of modern word processing you will find all of the word processing programs both mind boggling and somewhat intimidating. They are sorta easy to write a letter on, but require a lot of study to fully utilize their capabilities.
I will now attempt to compare WORD PRO to MS Word. This is the only program I’m familiar with since, if you remember I abandoned Word Perfect back at 5.2. I found Word Perfect to be very limited compared to MS Word. WORD PRO is similar to Word Perfect in that most functions are accessed through pull down menus. Personally I prefer to have the frequently used items on my tool bar. The thing I miss most is the ability to manipulate text from the tool bar. Left, right, and center justify are only accessed by pull down menu. Bold, italics and underlining by pull down menu also. These are both in the tool bar on MS Word. The other thing I didn’t like was not knowing where I was on the page. Word tells me exactly where I am at all times. WORD PRO uses the vertical scroll bar to tell you what page you’re on. That’s all the bad (and those are just personal quirks). I love the spell checker. It allows you to view your entire document with the problem areas highlighted. I found this to be really neat since it allowed me to keep an over all view of the document. Word only lets you view one sentence at a time and being able to view the whole document together allows you to insure the statement you want to make is clear.
I found WORD PRO to be a little clunky and slow, but I’m comparing
a 32 bit Word for Windows 95 with a 16 bit Windows 3.1 WORD PRO, but Lotus
will upgrade your WORD PRO 96 to a Windows 95 version free. Boy, is that
a deal or what! To coin Consumers Report I would definitely call Lotus
WORD PRO 96 a best buy. Either Word Perfect or MS Word cost close to $300.00
for a stand alone version and my Word 7 upgrade was $90.00. WORD PRO was
advertised in the October issue of P.C. ALAMODE for $55.00 and the second
copy is free. Grab a friend and split the cost. This is the best buy I’ve
seen in a long time. Or, you can buy one and give the free copy to a friend
and really impress them with how generous you are. If you don’t have the
October issue handy (or like a good member you gave it to someone else
to read) here is the number to call to order the WORD PRO 96:
1-800-874-0264, ext. 757932 ask for Bob Storm and tell him Timothy
Hoke said to call.
Well folks, to quote Forrest Gump “and that’s all I got to
say about that”.