'The idea is to out-Microsoft Microsoft by making sure your core product is on as many machines as possible,' said Tim Bajarin, an industry analyst at Creative Solutions in Campbell, Calif.Ĭorel says the Dell and HP deals, which run for one year and cover about 5 million machines, should roughly triple the number of WordPerfect copies bundled on new PCs. Analyst Stephen Baker, with Port Washington, N.Y.-based market researchers NPD Intelect, guessed that Corel gets between $5 and $10 per copy of WordPerfect shipped with a computer. Houck would not reveal how much computer manufacturers pay for Corel's software, but manufacturers usually get huge discounts on programs bundled with their hardware. 'It's a lot cheaper - that definitely was one of the main factors,' Houck said. The appearance of Corel's software, which costs less than Microsoft's, on all these new hard drives is also the latest sign that computer makers are trying to cut costs. In the past, Microsoft hasn't been shy about using its influence to discourage PC makers from bundling other companies' software. 'This year, the climate was right and the competitive environment went well for looking at alternatives for Microsoft.' 'We're at the table every year,' said Steve Houck, executive vice president at Corel. Sony already ships Corel's software in its home computers.

Dell includes WordPerfect in some Inspiron and SmartStep laptops and Dimension desktops starting this month, every HP Pavilion desktop sold in North America will come with WordPerfect. But a couple of deals recently signed by Ottawa software maker Corel will let consumers take home software from somebody besides Microsoft.ĭell and Hewlett-Packard are replacing Microsoft's Works with Corel's WordPerfect Productivity Pack, which includes the word-processing program of the same name and the Quattro Pro spreadsheet. For years, it was safe to assume that any Windows PC you could buy would include Microsoft's Works productivity software.

Word perfect productivity pack