(This post inspired by this Ars Technica article.)
I used to be a Word guru.
Dating back to the old Word for DOS days, I used Word extensively and thoroughly. On a daily basis, I was in there cranking out documentation and memos, esp. memos. I was the office resource for Word; I provided training classes to execs, engineers, and admins. For years after moving to Colorado I would get calls from folks at the Corporate HQ in California asking for Word assistance.
But something started happening over time. First off, memos went largely away — or, rather, morphed to email. Second, most documentation went online, onto web pages, wikis, etc. Creating things for printing out became less and less of an issue; most needs / opportunities for “desktop publishing” sort of … faded away. For my life, at least.
I still use Word — but largely for cases where some sort of legacy document is needed, or for rare cases (at home) where something will need to be printed — our Twelfth Night invitation on our Christmas cards, a flier at church, etc. We still get folks at the office who do up memos and email them to everyone. Email is still seen in many quarters more as the envelope than the letter, but it clearly can (and does) serve as both. Most of my “content” I’m simply doing these days in the email client, where it’s easy to read and store and search for.
So my own use of a dedicated, doc-file-producing word processor has dropped dramatically. And as for Word itself, I stopped needing its advanced features (“advanced” being a relative term, of course) long ago. I’ve had no compulsion to upgrade past my creaking 2003 installation (and could probably still be running 97 or XP with no pain). I installed Open Office on my new home computer, and have done the same on other computers I’ve set up in the past few years. No need to pay for something fancy. And now that I’m working in a more distributed world, I’m doing more with Google Apps.
If Word vanished overnight, I don’t think I’d miss it all that much. If the concept of word processing software went away, I have plenty of other ways to produce what use to go into .DOC files.
Now, if only we could do something about Excel …
I have long used word processors other than MS Word. Even for my dissertation, I used a simpler, faster word processor. I have never needed most of the features or Word, and I liked a smaller, faster, simpler, and cheaper tool. Since I use Macintosh, there was also a period when MS Word was a real dog (version 6 for Macintosh was awful). I think there are very few people who ever need all the power of MS Word. I think of it as being similar to one of those Guiness World Record pocket knives that has so many tools and features that it’s really impractical to use.
That .doc file format remains the closest thing to a universal word processing file format. Oh that i could remember to File Save As when I’m sending my OpenOffice docs to others!