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Not all of the hand-wringing about the proposed break-up of Microsoft has come from that company's employees and stockholders.
Some normal computer users have expressed a fear that their computers will get even harder to use if Microsoft is divided in two: an operating-systems company that makes Windows in various flavors, and an applications company that produces Word, Powerpoint, FrontPage, etc.
Their worry is that if everything doesn't come from Microsoft, then their programs won't work together, and Western Civilization will collapse.
It would make more sense to worry about being abducted by aliens from Arcturus.
Like most writers, I use a computer heavily for both researching and writing. We also publish a small magazine here, and that means a lot more computer work, for everything from text processing and graphic design to printing mailing labels with Postnet bar codes.
When Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued the Microsoft break-up order, now appealed and on the fast track to the Supreme Court, I read some of the anguished sky-is-falling prose and began to wonder -- would it affect us here if MicroSoft were just an operating-systems company? Is there a chance, even a remote one, that these nervous nellies have even the vaguest knowledge of what they're talking about?
After a day of inventory, I discovered that in the past 15 years, I've purchased exactly one Microsoft product that wasn't an operating system (various versions of MS-DOS and Windows) or bundled with a computer (Microsoft Works, Bookshelf and Encarta, none of which I've wanted to use twice on account of their obnoxious ways).
That purchase was Microsoft Macro Assembler, about a decade ago when I had time for serious dabbling in assembly language. Assembly language is sort of like baking your own bread or brewing your own beer -- there are some pleasures and rewards in getting exactly what you want, but it can be tedious and frustrating.
It was really tedious and frustrating with MASM, and I quickly discovered that Borland's Turbo Assembler was a superior product in every way: better tools, simpler syntax, clearer error messages. I sold my copy of MASM to a guy who hasn't spoken to me since then, although to be fair, it could be because he left town shortly thereafter.
As for getting actual work done, as opposed to coding in assembly language, we don't use a single Microsoft applications program, and yet we seem to do the same things that the Microsoft Chicken Littles do.
Almost all my writing is done in good old non-Microsoft WordStar for DOS. My fingers know it, so I can focus on putting the right words in the right order. I can just sit down and write without missing with those annoying templates that demand to know whether I'm producing a business letter or a memo or a newsletter. Most of my writing is for publication somewhere, and the font, leading, columns and the like are someone else's worry, or if it's my concern, then it's my concern at some other time than when I'm writing.
This column got to the Post courtesy of my own program that coverts WordStar files to the ASCII that the Post's computer expects, and QMODEM, an old DOS shareware communications program, none of which came from Microsoft.
Eudora works fine for email and Netscape surfs the Web. Neither is a Microsoft product. Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw and Corel Ventura Publisher enable us to produce our little magazine. None is from MicroSoft.
The old DOS version of PC-File handles the front end of mailing-list management, and the labels and postal reports come from some home-rolled programs in Spitbol, PostScript and assembly language -- again, a Microsoft-free environment.
We maintain a website, and somehow manage without Microsoft FrontPage. A Spitbol program converts Ventura files to HTML, and the shareware WinFTP program moves stuff from here to the website.
These programs all have to work with each other to share information, and they're from a lot of different sources: right here when I write the software, the Catspaw shop down the road that makes Spitbol, on to Canada, where Corel operates.
In short, you can enjoy a full and productive day on your computer without ever touching a Microsoft applications product. As far as we're concerned here, Microsoft is just an operating-system company, and we manage to get our work done.
I don't think we're all that different from most other users, since we do pretty much the same things. So I have trouble understanding why people are afraid that civilization will collapse if their operating system comes from one company and their word-processor from another.
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