WordStar

   q(Reading WORDSTAR.2000, listing time = 7:15)

           [Not a favorable review, but it answers many questions.]

                      WORDSTAR 2000 AND WORDSTAR 2000 PLUS:

                          A PAIR OF JOKERS BACK-TO-BACK

                                  January 1985

                          MicroPro International Corp.

                                33 San Pablo Ave.

                            San Rafael, CA 94903-4178

                                  415/499-1200

        Computers:            IBM PC,  XT, AT and fully compatible micro-

                              computers.

        Operating Systems:    PC-DOS or MS-DOS 2.0, 2.1 or 3.0.

        Media:                At   least  two  floppy  disk  drives   are

                              required; hard disk is recommended.

        Required Peripherals: Color  or  monochrome  monitor  (monochrome

                              with  or without special graphics adapter);

                              printer and interface adapter.

        Other Requirements:   Minimum 256K RAM for DOS 2.x;  minimum 320K

                              RAM for DOS 3.0 and IBM PC AT.

        Optional Items:       Smartmodem compatible autodial modem to use

                              telecommunications feature of WordStar 2000

                              Plus;  additional memory;  additional  disk

                              drives; electronic disk.

        System used for test: 640K Compaq Portable Computer equipped with

                              two    double-sided   double-density   disk

                              drives,  electronic disk,  Bizcomp Intelli-

                              Modem-XT, and Epson MX-80 and Qume Sprint 5

                              printers.

        List Prices:          $495 for WordStar 2000;

                              $595 for WordStar 2000 Plus;

                              $250 for WordStar 2000 or $350 for WordStar

                              2000  Plus when upgrading from older  Word-

                              Star. (Mail order prices lower)

                            Reviewed by Ernest E. Mau

        By now,  just about everyone knows that MicroPro has released  an

        all-new  WordStar for the IBM PC family.  WordStar 2000 is desig-

        nated  a  "companion" product,  not a replacement for  the  older

        WordStar.

        The  announcement last October was a media "event," although  the

        fanfare preceded product deliveries by more than a month.  At the

        time,  WordStar 2000 sounded great. It appeared that MicroPro had

        accommodated their customers in providing efficient and effective

        enhancements that would make WordStar attractive when compared to

        newer and more elaborate competitors.

        Well,  the software finally arrived. After putting it through its

        paces,  it's hard to believe that something this inefficient  and

        inconvenient  would  be  released to a  supposedly  sophisticated

        market of business and professional users.

Š        WordStar  2000 arrives on seven diskettes (six without  the  Plus

        features of telecommunications,  indexing and mailing lists).  It

        installs  on nine diskettes (eight without Plus) or a hard  disk.

        Five  diskettes (four without Plus) are copyable.  Two use  Auto-

        Install  procedures  to  make working copies and  generate  extra

        diskettes needed to run the system.

        Two  diskettes may be reclaimed later by  erasing  tutorials.  An

        obscure  installation hint says that a "key disk" needed in Drive

        B whenever the program is started from floppies may be copied and

        used  to  hold  data files--costing 11K of  each  data  diskette.

        Floppy  management  can be a problem,  with  plenty  of  diskette

        swapping needed.

        One  DOS  modification  must  be  made  during  installation.   A

        CONFIG.SYS  file  is  created or modified to include  a  FILES=20

        statement needed to run the system.  The user must boot DOS using

        the FILES=20 statement.  Another hint advises that working  speed

        may  be  improved by a BUFFERS=20 statement,  which costs 10K  of

        RAM, works only with over 256K of installed RAM, gives less speed

        improvement than suggested, and could interfere with other appli-

        cation programs.

        Hard  disks  having the "key" file available can  start  WordStar

        2000  with a specified filename (and path) to jump right  into  a

        document.  Floppy users must boot the modified DOS diskette, swap

        in the program diskette,  start WordStar 2000 from Drive A with a

        key disk in Drive B,  swap Drive B floppies if the key file isn't

        on  a  data disk,  and manually log onto the data  drive.  Floppy

        users cannot start WordStar 2000 with a specified filename.

        WordStar  2000 is copy protected,  allowing up to three copies to

        be installed.  Should a disk be damaged, a copy can be "uninstal-

        led"  to reduce the counter and allow a fresh  installation.  For

        hard disks, the program must be uninstalled before backing up the

        disk; failure to uninstall will give an unusable copy of WordStar

        2000  without  decrementing the counter,  costing  the  user  one

        working copy.

        MicroPro  promised many enhancements,  but the promise is largely

        unfulfilled.  Some improvements are attractive.  Others aren't. A

        few are so restrictive they're almost useless.

        Paragraph  reforming  is automatic.  Paragraphs affected  by  any

        changes are adjusted without intervention.  That's great--no more

        need to use CONTROL-B to reform margins after editing.

        Hyphenation is completely automatic when switched on.  That's not

        so great. Hyphens aren't always correctly placed or where they're

        wanted.  Automatic hyphens cannot be removed or relocated  except

        by  designating words to be kept together without any hyphenation

        or  by  manually inserting a "discretionary  hyphen"  before  the

        automatic hyphen.

Š        "Format  sheets"  are  provided and can be created by  the  user.

        Every  new document must be assigned a format that  sets  margins

        and tabs,  assigns the printer font,  and so on.  Available fonts

        are  determined according to the installed printer,  but not  all

        possibilities may be supported.  For an MX-80 with Graftrax Plus,

        WordStar 2000 automatically supports normal,  compressed,  double

        width, superscript and subscript fonts, but not italics. Program-

        mers may use an "unformatted" sheet to create ASCII files without

        benefit  of  formatting capabilities.  To later change a  format,

        commands  must be embedded in the file or the file can be  copied

        onto a new format sheet.

        An "undo" command recovers from erroneous deletions. A "keystroke

        glossary" stores information such that a typed short form abbrev-

        iation automatically is replaced with a long form,  say a product

        name  or  return  address.   Proportional  spacing  printers  are

        supported as are color printers and sheet feeders.  Some columnar

        math and columnar sorting are provided. These things seem to work

        well.

        Windowing  permits simultaneous display and editing of  only  two

        documents. It's useful for cut-and-paste operations between docu-

        ments, but really doesn't gain much.

        Built-in  footnoting  automatically numbers footnotes but  prints

        them  only at the end of the document.  Users needing  bottom-of-

        page footnoting are out of luck.

        The spelling proofreader is CorrectStar.  It's supposed to run in

        256K  but  wouldn't  on my Compaq.  I had to divert  part  of  my

        electronic  disk to provide 320K of working RAM before I  stopped

        getting an "insufficient memory" message.  The error message also

        coincided  with the trashing of all data files on my  work  disk.

        Floppy users must exchange diskettes in Drive A,  but CorrectStar

        needs two files that it copies onto the data diskette in Drive B,

        gobbling  up  89K on any diskette with a file to be  proofed  and

        increasing chances of running out of disk space.

        The  TelMerge portion of the Plus version is almost  useless.  It

        supports only Hayes compatible modems. It's strange that MicroPro

        would give no modem choices after providing nine menus of printer

        selections.  The choice of network services is limited, with only

        one space to design an individual access. While it looks possible

        to  modify the TelMerge menu,  instructions are sketchy,  and the

        chore will be beyond average users.  There are no error  checking

        protocols,  only ASCII transfers. Line and character delays can't

        be built in, so it's easy to overrun services like CompuServe and

        slow bulletin-board style receivers. TelMerge wouldn't send blank

        lines  except as the first or last lines,  thereby losing desired

        paragraph separations.

        I could go on picking at flaws and apparent program "bugs," but I

        need  to  cover the one thing that would ruin WordStar  2000  for

        serious  users  even if everything else was  perfect--its  speed.

        WordStar  2000  is among the slowest word processors  I've  seen.

Š        WordStar 3.3 is no speed demon,  but putting it next to  WordStar

        2000 is like matching a sports car to a lawnmower.

        I used comparable 29K test files with 539 lines of identical text

        on an electronic disk to compare various operations.  Just moving

        the  cursor  from the first to last characters took  4.5  seconds

        under  WordStar 3.3 (CONTROL-QC) but 75.6 seconds under  WordStar

        2000) (CONTROL-CE).  The CONTROL-CE command cannot be interrupted

        under WordStar 2000 and must run to completion. Also, just moving

        the  cursor tagged the file as having been changed (as seen by  a

        "quit-abandon"  CONTROL-QA command) even though nothing had  been

        altered.

        Another  test replaced "the" with "the" throughout the file as  a

        whole  word only,  without asking for verification,  and  showing

        each  change.  WordStar  3.3 took 2 minutes 30.8  seconds,  while

        WordStar  2000  took 10 minutes 24.1  seconds.  The  same  search

        without  displaying  changes took 16.5 seconds with WordStar  3.3

        but 3 minutes 39.5 seconds with WordStar 2000.

        After  a simple find command,  a "next" command may be issued  to

        find the next occurrence.  WordStar 3.3 found the second "the" in

        text so quickly with it's CONTROL-L command it couldn't be  timed

        accurately  (less  than  0.8 second).  WordStar  2000  took  13.2

        seconds  with its CONTROL-N command because it slowly redisplayed

        the entire command with options before executing.

        On  printing  to disk,  which is required to send  WordStar  2000

        documents via a modem,  I printed from and to an electronic disk.

        WordStar 3.3 finished in 1 minute 38.9 seconds, but WordStar 2000

        needed 7 minutes 20.1 seconds.

        Virtually  every  aspect  of  WordStar 2000 is  too  slow  to  be

        practical.  That  slowness feeds back into other  functions  like

        finding  items  to tag for indexing or converting files from  one

        WordStar to another, making them equally impractical.

        Incidentally,  WordStar  and  WordStar 2000 data  files  are  not

        compatible.  The  new files are cut off from third-party programs

        like grammatical proofreaders.  A conversion program provided can

        move files from one WordStar to another but does only part of the

        job.  Converted files almost always have to be manually reformat-

        ted and cleaned up,  which, at the slow speed of the new program,

        can take hours.

        This  all means that serious word processing users  should  avoid

        WordStar  2000.  Put  away your checkbooks and don't,  under  any

        circumstances,  surrender  old copies of WordStar to  upgrade  to

        WordStar  2000.  You could "upgrade" yourself right into ineffic-

        iency  and costly losses in time and  productivity.  Moving  into

        WordStar  2000 could reduce word processing output by as much  as

        half  or two-thirds.  Instead,  look for revisions to the conven-

        tional  WordStar  and  WordStar  Professional   packages,   which

        continue to be fully supported MicroPro products.

Š

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