It's topic drift, but referencing WP software from that era always reminds me of my OWN experience then.
In junior high and high school, my computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer II. We did not have a floppy drive; we used a cassette player instead. SOME software -- games, mostly -- was available on cassette, too, but my word processor was on a cartridge, like an Atari game.
This was, at the time, my first and only exposure to word processing software.
Then, in my junior year of high school (86-87), I was on the annual staff, and we had an IBM PCjr in the office for our use. It had dual floppies -- the height of luxury, or so I thought.
Imagine my shock and dismay when I found that performance in the word processor (moving between modes, say) was AGONIZINGLY SLOW compared to my much-less-fancy TRS-80. See, the word proc on the PC was on a floppy, and so reading other bits of the program meant hitting that fairly slow bus. At home, though, it was on a ROM slotted into the main board, and so everything within the program was basically instant.
Also topic drift, but very similar to yours: i'm 2 or 3 years older, had an Atari 800 at home courtesy of my mom, but couldn't save enough to buy a cassette drive via lawn mowing, so would write down or re-enter whatever between parent turning on the light switch in the room so i could see, not realizing they turned off the computer instead. The IBM PC came out; I got my dad to sell a fancy shotgun bought for me at birth, in the newspaper classifieds, and used the money to get a PC. On that PC i had an early version of Word...and it was super useful.
In junior high and high school, my computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer II. We did not have a floppy drive; we used a cassette player instead. SOME software -- games, mostly -- was available on cassette, too, but my word processor was on a cartridge, like an Atari game.
This was, at the time, my first and only exposure to word processing software.
Then, in my junior year of high school (86-87), I was on the annual staff, and we had an IBM PCjr in the office for our use. It had dual floppies -- the height of luxury, or so I thought.
Imagine my shock and dismay when I found that performance in the word processor (moving between modes, say) was AGONIZINGLY SLOW compared to my much-less-fancy TRS-80. See, the word proc on the PC was on a floppy, and so reading other bits of the program meant hitting that fairly slow bus. At home, though, it was on a ROM slotted into the main board, and so everything within the program was basically instant.