[ Thanks to Mike
Cannon-Brookes for this link. ]
“It was back in 1994 when I first realised the software
industry was badly broken. Then, like now, I was running my own
writing business. I owned and used a number of computers, but my
favourite working system was a trusty aging Zenith notebook with
just 20Mb of hard disc and an 8086 processor.“
“That Zenith might have been underpowered, but in those days it
was the most portable machine in my stable and as any journalist
will tell you, portability is better than grunt. What’s more, it
had a solid metal case and could cope with heavy keyboard pounding
– a legacy of my typewriter era training. And because I did
everything (including dreaming) in Word Perfect 5.1 there were no
performance issues. Indeed, I had written my own powerful suite of
macros to speed things up.”
“At the time my major client, a newspaper, installed a new
system based on Microsoft technology and lo the edict came down on
tablets of stone that henceforth I had to submit my stories in
Microsoft Word format. So I did the right thing, put my Zenith in
the cupboard, spent up big on a new PC – just one generation behind
the current flagship model – and installed Word 2.something. I
wasn’t overjoyed, but it all worked OK and the newspaper kept
sending those cheques.”