Why did Microsoft Word beat out WordPerfect?
I think there were three major reasons: • As Kathy Jacobs says, back then computers were transitioning from character-mode UIs to GUIs and Microsoft Word made the transition faster. WordPerfect 5.2 (the first non-buggy version for Windows) came out in 1992. By then, Microsoft Word for Windows was on its second version. • In 1990, Microsoft started selling Microsoft Office, a suite that combined the very popular Excel with Word and PowerPoint. Anyone who wanted Excel (and lots of people did) could get Word for only a little bit more money. • WordPerfect was popular because it supported so many printers. Its huge driver library was a “moat” that prevented competitors from displacing it. But once Microsoft Windows became popular, printer manufacturers began creating drivers for Windows and its driver library grew faster.
