Word processors

[Trickyvee]

Half way through uni I got a word processor. Thought it was a revelation at the time but actually it was rubbish compared to PCs, which were only just starting to appear then so nobody had them. It was a Sharp Fontwriter - I still have it in the loft. A screen showing a meagre 5 lines of liquid crystal display, ink ribbons that cost a fortune from Boots and only a floppy disk drive for saving things.

Towards the end of uni they got a few PCs and I tried to use the floppy disk to print out an essay from the PC. FAIL! The word processor programmes were totally incompatable with the ones on the PC. Word processors quickly died a death over the next couple of years as PCs came to the fore.

[vanhelsing]

Re: Word processors

I used to do my writing on word processors (a Smith Corona than a Brother) but was very limited. Yeah, they were great dispite their limitations (on a black on yellow beige screen in broad daylight it's nearly impossible to see what you'rte writing) and could tell you a few horror stories based on my experiences, such as the disks going faulty, having to look through numerous disks for what you're working on, being unable to add proper ancient texts and the very limited colours and what you could do with the text effects). One of the problems i had from going to word processor (Brother) to Windows was that the laptop didn't have a 3.5 inch floppy drive so I had to buy an external one from Dixons and the sales bloke coouldn't believe it when I told him I was still using 3.5 inch floppies.
How else was I going to finish what I was working on if I couldn't use a 3.5 inch floppy?
Don't get me wrong, I used to spend hours doing my writing on my Brother and Smith Corona but aren't USB flash drives also prone to faults as well?