Fellow Daynoter John Doucette, having recently moved over to a new job at a law firm, e-mailed me to note that Word seems to be very popular, if it isn't in the majority already.
He is probably right, MS Office/Word may have already displaced WP Office in private practice. My comments earlier were about government service. But even then, I guess I shouldn't have generalized. All I can say is what I've seen here in state government (specifically the Hawai'i Judiciary, insert disclaimer here).
In our office, about half the workers prefer WordPerfect because it's what they know best and they don't see any particular reason to change. By that I mean there aren't many, if any, features in Word that would make life so much easier than WP. In addition, WP Office is a lot cheaper than MS Office.
And you know, I can't fault anyone for staying with WP. Why would anyone want to learn a new application simply because it is most popular? Shouldn't such decisions be made on the basis of criteria such as price, features, ease of use, etc.?
That said, I use Word because that's what I've been using for the last 10 or 15 years. However, as soon as Star Office/OpenOffice is able to do what I need it to do I'll probably switch over to that based on, if nothing else, it's so much cheaper and there are versions for Linux.
Anyway, as I always say, use the tool that works best for you.
Aloha!
