What Happened to Microsoft Works? Why Microsoft Works Disappeared

From the late 1980s to 2009, Microsoft Works came already installed on home computers, and then Microsoft quietly took it off them. This is the story of why the free program so many families relied on was retired, and what replaced it. Works combined a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database in one program. It cost $295 on the Macintosh in 1986 and $149 on the PC by 1989, yet most copies were never bought in a box. They came preloaded, and by 2005 internal Microsoft documents put the company's take at about $2 for each bundled copy. You will learn: 1. How a small firm run by Don Williams built the first version 2. Why HP and Dell swapped Works for WordPerfect in 2002 3. The 67-cent calculation in a 2005 Think Week paper for Bill Gates 4. Why Word could not always open a .wps file 5. How Office Starter 2010 took over the free spot on new PCs If you still have a letter or a budget saved as a .wps file somewhere, tell us in the comments what it held. What remains of Works today is those files, and an open-source library that still reads them. Subscribe for more careful histories of the software on your desk. Sources: Microsoft Corporation Form 10-K, fiscal 1994 - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1994: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... Microsoft eyes ads as consumers close wallets - Ina Fried, CNET News.com, 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/200511250... Microsoft to put free Office Starter 2010 on new PCs - Gregg Keizer, Computerworld, 2009: https://www.computerworld.com/article... Integrated Software review, Microsoft Works 1.05 - PC World, April 1989: https://archive.org/details/pcworld74... #MicrosoftWorks #MSWorks #WPSFiles #OfficeStarter #WorksSuite #WordPerfect #Windows95 #RetroSoftware #OldSoftware #ComputerHistory Disclaimer: The voiceover used in this video was generated using AI.