September 12, 2004
Pop quiz is right
PC Magazine has a non-partisan examination of text from the manual for the IBM Selectric Composer typewriter compared with the same text typed in Word. It shows the two samples side-by-side, and they look pretty dang close. As the article puts it, "The fact that the two resemble each other does not prove that both of them were typed in Microsoft Word." And, you know, if you just eyeball them, they look like a match. Hell, if somebody read the two documents to you over the phone, it'd be a slamdunk!
But the author of the article doesn't overlay one sample on the other, the way people are comparing these "memos" against their own Word files of the same text. (They don't look "very much like" Word docs, as PC Mag puts it. They look exactly like Word docs.) In deference to Atrios, who provided the PC Mag link, I decided to put the left one (MS Word) on top of the right one (IBM Selectric):
As you can see, the word "The" lines up perfectly. Take that, RethugliKKKan$! But hey, I'm just a guy who knows how to cut-and-paste and deselect Draw Opaque in MS Paint.
In my pajamas.
P.S. Say... IBM vs. Microsoft again?
P.P.S. Okay, this is really cutting into my baby-eating time, but here's the same comparison at double size:
Maybe PC Mag will put up some examples that couldn't be mistaken for postage stamps?
P.P.P.S. It's alive! ALIVE!!!
P.P.P.P.S. And LGF (Let's Get Fonty?) arrives at the same conclusion, with a much more aesthetically pleasing presentation.
P.P.P.P.P.S. And here the author of the PC Mag piece attempts to keep up with his critics.