[jacquesm]

I too owned a whole bunch of Acorn stuff. Most of the software was excellent. The best basic interpreter around and a very good shot at a DOS.

The Acorn 'Unicorn' was excellent but too expensive and this is roughly where the parent comment comes in. So Acorn did a lot of good stuff before they lost the plot, roughly around the time they released the Archimedes, which was an amazing machine for the time but the Amiga had far surpassed anything Acorn could offer software wise and the ST and Commodore were gobbling up the lower end.

[batou]

Yes the BASIC interpreter was the best thing there was on the platform. Mainly for me at least because it was heavily structured, didn't require line numbering like earlier versions and had a stupidly powerful inline assembler.

I had a 1040ST and an Amiga 500 at the time as well (spot the geek) and the software wasn't that great on those platforms either IMHO. Even PDS on DOS was nicer to program in with the 2kg pile of manuals.

The killer was the rise of the PC and you know what; I'm glad it killed everything. Perhaps controversially, a couple of years down the line and as someone who wanted to get shit done back then, things like Windows 3, VB, Word, Excel, OLE appearing were clearly the future.

[jacquesm]

I'll grant you excel.

[Donch]

*sheet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViewSheet

[jacquesm]

Yes, sheet was pretty good. (As was word!), but Excel really had the edge there, even when it first came out.

It's the one product by MS that stood out as being best-in-class straight from day one.

[pjc50]

.. by being a careful GUI clone of the existing successful product, Lotus 1-2-3. Right down to being largely formula-compatible and having the same hotkeys. That's why F2 is "edit current cell".

[agumonkey]

Excel was so nice I wrote my documents in it. I wonder how much of Microsoft was built on its fame.

[batou]

It was ok until I lost the function key strip :)

[jacquesm]

http://rayharper.co.uk/acorn/bbc_images/fn_key_strips.pdf

[batou]

Thanks - about 25 years too late. Plus I didn't have the Internet then! :)