WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS

Don't you ever wish you could put dear old WordPerfect 5.1 on your new computer, just to have the option? Let's face it - we all know Microsoft Word isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's got some real inconveniences - at least for those of us who used WordPerfect for DOS for years.

Today, Microsoft Word is the most widely distributed wordprocessing software. It used not to be so. Until Windows superseded DOS, WordPerfect 5.1 was nigh on ubiquitous. To this day, it is sorely missed by people who were forced by circumstance to switch to Word. Word may be better for fancy things - but how often does one need to use that sort of stuff? There are many respects in which WordPerfect 5.1 is the superior software for regular daily wordprocessing needs.

My old computer crashed sometime over the Christmas holidays in 2003 - I was out of the country at the time, so I don't know exactly when it happened. It couldn't be rebooted; so I had to buy a new one. This came with the trial version of Microsoft Word 2003, which does not include the conversion software needed to read files in WordPerfect 5.1 (which, of course, meant that I couldn't read my back-up disks).
      As a marketing strategy, this is incredibly dumb. Instead of paying for the full version of Word, which I assume was the cute idea behind it all, I bought the software for WordPerfect 5.1 on e-Bay (the very first time that I used e-Bay), paid for it with PayPal (the very first time I used PayPal), and got a friend to install it on the new computer.
      I'm the kind of person who loathes change and freezes up under stress. For me, all this was stressful in the extreme. But I was utterly desperate. And desperate people will go to extreme lengths to find a way back to normality.

For anyone out there who laments the loss of the best software around, and still resents being forced by circumstances beyond their control to operate in a less than ideal system - help is at hand. Believe it or not, there is a website devoted entirely to helping people who want to continue to use WordPerfect for DOS.