When a useful feature is lost in "upgrades"
As a writer, I find myself in need of more than one word processor. A modern version of Microsoft Word for Windows is necessary for compatibility with what I might receive or what a publisher might require, but I actually do my work in Word 6.0 for DOS. Why? I can work in what I call "job orientation" in the DOS version but not in the Windows version. Job orientation means that I click on a job icon, Word gets customized for that job in every way I please to customize it, and then it reopens the job just as I'd left it, however many files had been open, with the cursors where they had been when I'd last left off the job, not just one file open with the cursor at the top of that single file. When I leave off a job, Word goes right back to its previous defaults. I can store as many jobs as I please, and they all are kept straight. One cannot do this with Winword. I also can write complex macros in Word for DOS, including ones that make use of external programs. This "shelling out" is beyond Winword, too. I'm glad that Windows XP has the Virtual DOS Machine in it, making it really easy to set up all of this. In later versions of Windows, I'd have to virtualize an entire computer and install an operating system, such as DOS 5 or 6 or maybe Windows 95 on that virtual computer.
