Marcia - 4:50 am on May 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

>WILL depend on the "purchasing public."

papa, the purchasing public consists to a great deal of companies that have MOST of their staff receptionists, customer service people, accounting clerks, secretarial and administrative help. They need products that are easy to learn for the non-tech HSG type people. Things that seem *simple* to tech-types are not for the majority of the work force, and companies need software that they can easily get an abundance of people to be able to know how to use with a minimum of training.

It's not cost-effective to start training people on anything new when there's an abundance of labor easily skilled in MS products, which are for the most part very user friendly to computer illiterates.

IMHO that's why it all took off in the first place. I remember in a DOS class 95% of the people being in a total fog - not dummies either. It was a boon to the clerical workforce when MS came on the scene, and a good part of the workforce is at a clerical level with computers. An attorney wants to hire a legal secretary with experience in MS Word - period. It's set a standard, just like LaCerte (by Intuit) is the industry standard for tax software for CPAs. It's skills that are portable and makes it easier to deal with the high turnover in those work categories.

Microsoft did look forward, and a lot of people didn't get left out in the cold with the advent of computerized offices, which didn't happen large scale until MS came along with applications that are easy to learn. There's a world of difference between programming and using an application - and most of the needed workforce is applications oriented.