Microsoft Works

Microsoft Works is a word processing software distributed by Microsoft since the early 90s.  It generally has low memory and processor requirements to be run, owing that to the way it has been architecturally designed on the operating system.  It was a predecessor to Microsoft Word and the Office Suite.

Once Microsoft Word was released as a feature packed word processing software, Microsoft Works became a cheaper alternative pushed and rarely updated by Microsoft in order to capture a share of the market which may have otherwise been lost to free alternatives or by users who were already familiar with Works and refused to switch to Microsoft Office.

Trying to encourage users to switch to the Microsoft Office Suite, despite the continued updates to Microsoft Works, several steps have been taken to attempt to make the use of Microsoft Works limited: the file size in Microsoft Works is limited so that large documents, often found in an large business operation, will not be able to be created and features such as syncing the address book and the calendar found in Microsoft Works with a mobile device such as a smart phone have also been recently removed. Despite trying to phase out the software and its WPS file format, Microsoft bowed to customer demands and implemented native file support for their Microsoft Office file types such as the document, .doc, and Excel, .xls, files in the Works software.

Microsoft Works also took an interesting turn in 2008 when a free version supported only by advertisements was released named Works SE. Although this was released, it was given almost no marketing and many users do not know about it. This product contains all the major features of Works.

However, due to the popularity of Microsoft Office and Microsoft's intent to stop developing two word processors, Microsoft Works will no longer be sold starting in 2010, marking the end of an almost two decade run for the word processor.