This is interesting: "The vast majority of computer buyers still seem (to me) to base their computer purchasing decision around whether the computer will run Microsoft Word (or rather, Microsoft Office)."
I would argue that for most users, the applications *are* the computer.
And, the applications that most users use on a regular basis are Internet Explorer, Outlook (or the equivalent), and Word. (With Excel maybe, a bit, to create and manage lists--in my experience, about 70% of Excel users use it to generate and sort lists and make numbered tables. They may use SUM every once and a while. But that's another story for another time.)
If, from a user's point of view, the computer *is* its applications then the applications are the major factor in a buying decision.
(This is especially true if a user understands a little bit about how to use some applications and just knows that "faster and newer" hardware is better than whatever they have now.)
A user buys Word (document creation), Internet Explorer (Web browsing), and Outlook (E-mail tool).
It's not a case of "I need a faster computer because it will run my applications better."
It is a case of "I want Word to run faster and better so I need a faster computer."
Or, more likely, "My computer died so I need another computer so I can use Internet Explorer."
Get what I mean?
It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think it makes a difference in terms of the question you asked.
Think about it this way: Assume most users are *not* technically sophisticated by the standards you could apply to mostly everyone in this forum.
This means that they may not know how to make favorites or bookmarks but rely on "auto-complete" URL addresses to get to favorite places. (That feature is "hiding"--not "listed" but "hiding"--in a menu or behind a button.)
They have a hard time with the concept of filesystems and folders--and where things "live" on a hard drive. "Opening" a file causes anxiety--how do I "open" it, what do I open it with, where do I find it, how do I find it now that this window is open? Etc.
When to single-click and when to double-click causes an issue. (The concept of selecting vs. opening something can baffle.)
Right- (or ctrl-) clicking to get a menu for options does not occur to them in most cases, even if they have done it before.
What is a hard drive? The beige box, my computer, that's sitting here is the hard drive, right?
They only think about whatever application is open at that very moment and presented to them. (The concept of multiple programs being open at once and cutting-and-pasting between them is foreign. Switching from one program to another is foreign to most.)
Conceptually, the average computer user is really an application user and he or she only knows a few applications and very "limited" (in terms of the application's true scope) things to do within those applications. That's the use case, really.
So, back to Word.
Word lets a person open a blank page--like a piece of paper, which the user probably understands and he or she has used in the real world--and then the user can type on it, paste pictures into, and play a *little* bit with the font on it. And there are templates available that one can use if one needs to write a letter, etc., and can find the templates.
Word is a program that probably has more to do with the "real world" in terms of what it does and how it does it than E-mail or IM or Web Browsing. (Conceptually, think about that "doing something with a piece of paper" analogy I made above versus the 100% artificial process of Web Browsing which is NOT the same as "just reading something.")
I can safely claim that most Word users don't use tables, or styles, or bullets. They do spell check and grammar check (and they believe the grammar checker is correct somehow, but ignore it). They print. In portrait mode. They don't highlight items and they don't insert URLs and Hyperlink them. They don't insert Object From File. They do Bold, Italicize, and Underline (although they probably shouldn't do the latter in most cases). They may every now and then choose a piece of clip art--because that comes from a library on the machine. But inserting a photo is tough and doesn't often work as expected, especially when printing.
Anyway, I've covered WAY too much ground in here and I'm losing my point.
I guess my point is that users don't think of computers as machines upon which software runs.
To them, the software is the computer.
And they know about Word--because that's what you write a letter with, print an invoice with, or make some other type of document with. Everybody uses Word. They use Word at work and at school.
Why use anything else, if you're an average user?
As a user, Word does everything I expect it to do. Open an empty page. Type on the empty page. Save. Send to a friend (if I can find the file from the paper clip button in Outlook because I don't know about the Send As Attachment command off of that hidden submenu in Word). Send to work.
You get what I mean.
And the users who don't know how to use these applications to the fullest aren't in the wrong, either. So, don't think I'm user bashing--because I'm not.
It's dang hard to use a computer from a novice's perspective (and most users *are* novices, especially when compared with the folks that congregate here). There's a lot to keep up with in terms of what to do from a Desktop or Start bar or Dock (if the user knows what to do with them) and there are many, many modes of operation. Almost all based on the context of the task, which is not the same thing as prompting the user what to do next.
And Word may strike a novice as something familiar--it's a piece of paper ready to be used--unlike mostly everything else that is way more complex than that. (Not that Word isn't complex, but it can be very simple if you just launch, type, print, and save.)
Anyway, that was a long way to go just to say I don't think that a user's question "will it run Word" is unusual. It should be expected.
