Recently my colleagues and I had been discussing the historical past of phrase processors (that’s simply the form of factor we do right here), and some of them reminisced about utilizing one known as WordPerfect many, a few years in the past. Given that its heyday was within the eighties, I hadn’t heard a lot about it, so I Googled it for enjoyable. And that’s once I found that it’s nonetheless being offered as a productiveness suite. What’s extra, it’s not a type of instances the place an organization continues to be taking cash for what’s primarily abandonware — the latest launch is WordPerfect 2021. As in a yr in the past. And it’s on sale.

Corel, the corporate that’s been in control of WordPerfect since before I was born, is working a (horrifically fashionable) Black Friday in July promotion, which ends at 9 AM ET on Thursday. WordPerfect Office Home and Student, which accommodates the eponymous phrase processing software program, in addition to apps for making slideshows, spreadsheets, and taking notes, is marked right down to $59.99 from $100. And the Standard and Professional variations, which embrace additional software program and capabilities, are a full $100 and $200 off, respectively.

Image: Corel

So simply to sum up right here: this software program — one of many go-to phrase processors earlier than graphical consumer interfaces had been widespread — continues to be round, and the corporate behind it apparently thinks it’s one thing that new customers are desirous about selecting up. All I can say is wow.

To be clear, I’m positive there’s some form of niche use case that individuals actually love WordPerfect for, and that I’m going to listen to from just about everybody who nonetheless makes use of it why it’s truly one of the best phrase processing software program on the market. (And I welcome that suggestions! I’m fascinated to be taught what you do with it.) But I’d additionally assume that anybody who wants WordPerfect for no matter they’re doing… already has it, that means they received’t get a lot out of a sale.

I don’t imply to knock WordPerfect, however I’m not likely positive I’d advocate it to most individuals. If you’re already ready to spend cash on a productiveness suite, you’d nearly actually be a lot better served by simply going with the Office apps you get via Microsoft 365, which is principally the usual, for higher or worse. If you hate paying subscriptions for software program, Microsoft even sells a perpetual license for Office 2021. And when you’re seeking to WordPerfect as a less expensive different, why not simply go all the way in which to free software program — LibreOffice is a strong and utterly free productiveness suite for individuals who demand to have a full set of options accessible offline, and Google Docs is completely nice for most individuals who simply need to write some paperwork and never have to fret about how you can save or share them.

With all that stated, I’m very glad to listen to that WordPerfect continues to be round. It’s not usually that you simply hear about apps which were round for 40-plus years, particularly ones that aren’t the highest canine of their class. Does it look its age? Sure, I assume — WordPerfect 2021 clearly isn’t utilizing the identical UI because it did within the OS/2 or Amiga days, however it does remind me a lot of the early 2000s once I was first studying to make use of a pc. But that’s not essentially a nasty factor. Not each app is made higher by a flashy, fashionable UI, or cloud integration.

Image: raviloks on eBay

One final observe: if you wish to have probably the most authentically retro phrase processing expertise, you may even order WordPerfect on a disk. Yes, Corel will ship you a DVD with its 2021 productiveness suite on it. As somebody who understands the worth of time far, far-off from the web, I actually respect this as an possibility — and as somebody whose computer systems are all lower than 5 – 6 years outdated and subsequently don’t have any form of disk drive, I form of want it got here on a flash drive. Or 5.25-inch floppies, like a number of the DOS variations did. Given that the Home and Student version requires round 2.75 GB of area, it’d solely take round 2,300 high-density (learn: 1.2 MB) disks.

PS — to reply the query certainly one of my colleagues requested once I found WordPerfect 2021: no, you now not should hit the enter key like a carriage return on the finish of each line to ensure the textual content doesn’t simply run off the display screen. How far we’ve come!