Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

WordStar: an oldie but a goodie!

by Rob - December 21st, 2007.
Filed under: WordStar.

I still write with WordStar for DOS, and I note that today marks the 15th anniversary of the file-stamp date on the last version ever released: WordStar for DOS 7.0 Revision D was finalized December 21, 1992.

I’ve customized the hell out of WordStar over the years, and love it. It’s fast, rock-solid, wonderfully optimized for use by touch typists, feature-rich, and much better at text manipulation than Word or WordPerfect in my humble opinion. And, since it can save files in RTF, which every Windows wordprocessor can read, I can’t think of any reason to switch.

Sure, someday new Windows computers will stop coming with any DOS support, but (a) there will be an endless supply of old ones on eBay, and (b) Linux or other platforms will always have decent DOS emulators, I’m sure.

Anyway, time to put WordStar to work — as I myself go back to work on the homestrecth form Wake, the 18th novel I’ve written with WordStar.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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