ELEVEN
Do the programs include good instruction manuals? You still may want them if they don’t—as long as you can buy readable books about them.
TWELVE
What machines will run those programs? And how well will they run them?
Take WordStar. Many machines can run this popular word-processing program; but not all will let you use the cursor keys—the arrowlike ones—to move from place to place on your screen. With some computers you must simultaneously tap on two keys, not just one, to move the arrow. You could have WordStar customized for your machine; but why not instead buy a computer that works well with it from the start?
You also want to consider the operating system that a machine uses. By now, the most widely used operating system is MS-DOS, which has become a de facto standard because of IBM’s endorsement of it. It has supplanted CP/M. Rival machines may not run every program that the IBM computers can. Some, like the Compaq portable, come close. But if a computer exactly duplicated all the IBM’s functions, Big Blue’s legal staff would crush the maker.
The widely used Apples have their own operating systems—one for the Apple II series and another for the Macintosh.
There’s also UNIX. Ma Bell developed it originally, AT&T Information Systems now supports it, and Microsoft sells a microcomputer version called XENIX. The gurus say UNIX could be the operation system of the future. With it programmers can more easily write software for machines of different brands and sizes and “port” their programs from one computer to another. UNIX may also be good for micros with many people using them at once. The negative is that the nonexperts sometimes have more trouble using UNIX than they do good ole CP/M and MS-DOS.
So much for the mainstream and soon-to-be-mainstream formats. What, however, if the program you need comes only in an oddball one? Think hard. Do you need this software—hence, this computer—immediately? Or can you wait until the wonderful program or an equivalent is available for other machines?
By the way, the word “format” doesn’t refer just to the general style like CP/M or MS-DOS. It can also mean specific machines within CP/M and so on. Different makes of CP/M-style computers, for instance, may not read each other’s disks because their exact formats are different.