Well folks, WORDSTAR 4.0 is here for us CP/M users --- sort of!! After updating to WS4 on my IBM AT at work and using it for a while, I really wanted to update my WORDSTAR 3.3 CP/M version at home. As soon as the new release was announced on GENIE, I called MicroPro and spent $94.00 for an upgrade. The first thing that I noticed when my CP/M WS4 upgrade arrived (the day before the Labor Day weekend), was that instead of a nice three- ring binder supplied with the IBM upgrade, the CP/M manual was spiral- bound and didn't really work in the light-weight cardboard cover provided! Installation on my MSC-ICO CP/M+ computer with an Okidata 193 printer took only a few minutes using WINSTALL to do the basic set-up and WSCHANGE to set up the special screen display ESC sequences. The function keys on my keyboard (which have key codes above 7F Hex and were easy to patch on WS 3.3) appear to be useless with WS4, so I had to rewrite the operating system to translate the key codes to the usual ^K, ^J, etc. needed for WS4. At this point the keyboard and display seemed to work pretty well, especially after changing most of the DELAY variables. Then I tried to print the PRINT.TST file --- what a disaster. WS4 would not recognize the 12 CPI or the DP modes that were set as defaults. All of the print came out in 10 CPI and NLQ mode except for the lines that were in italics or 17.1 CPI (which is an Okidata default), so I tried to BOLD these particular lines and as a result WS4 completely forgot that it could print in the "Data Processing" mode. As a result, I tried to define the "CUSTOM" printer driver to be all things that the Okidata 193 could do --- that didn't work either, since the "CUSTOM" driver didn't cover all of the options. Next I tried to install my Olivetti typewriter as an option (to a serial port with hardware handshaking), forget it --- no software support and no documentation (as is possible as suggested in the WS4 documentation). Now on to "THE WORD", the patches from PROFILES magazine a few years back allowing THE WORD to be used from the opening menu of WORDSTAR 3.3 are MUCH more user friendly than the current WS4 implementation. The new "THE WORD" does not seem to be as smart as the older, smaller version. I checked the spelling of files that MicroPro provided with WS4 and found that the new "THE WORD" does not recognize some very simple words that the older version does! At home I use WORDSTAR to do programming, so I will probably stick with WORDSTAR 3.3. My wife is a writer, so she will probably move to WORDSTAR 4.0 --- when someone gets the bugs worked out of it. PS: as a matter of fact, the new "THE WORD" had problems finding common words in this document!