If you’re a novice buying from a full-service computer store, ask it to set up your WordStar. Better still, try to dope it out yourself so you make your own changes in the future. You might get guidance from a users’ group.
Likewise, you might tinker with a communications program to make it work better with the computers you plan to use and talk to. Or you might set up a record-keeping program to check automatically the accuracy of information fed into it.
ACCESSORY PROGRAMS
WordStar will work with a variety of accessory programs intended especially for it—everything ranging from electronic thesauruses to spelling checkers, word counters, footnoters, and a communications program.
Some word processors, accounting packages, other software, include all the functions you’d need. Others require you to buy the accessory programs. That’s not always bad. Why bother to pay for a dictionary if you’re a perfect speller? Just make sure—before you buy—that the original software either includes good accessory programs or will work with them.
Some outside companies’ accessory programs, by the way, may be superior to those from the main software’s manufacturer.
SUPPORT FROM THE MANUFACTURER
There is one plus that I wish I could have included in my praise of WordStar—good support from the manufacturer. Don’t count on it. In the area of guidance and troubleshooting from the manufacturer, WordStar on occasion hasn’t even been adequate.
Calling as a prospective customer, I couldn’t find out if WordStar in a Xerox 820 format would run smoothly on my Kaypro. The company took down my message, then mailed me literature that didn’t answer my question.
A California man phoned MicroPro with a problem involving DataStar, a sister program of WordStar that eases record keeping. “We do not have time to correct the programming that results in this quirk,” he heard. He complained to InfoWorld that MicroPro “has some really elegant program tools but no inkling as to the meaning of customer support.” Likewise, the head of a MicroPro users group in New York told the magazine that “fully half of the people who called me to join immediately presented me with a problem they were having.”