1) It avoids incompatibility issues in document formatting (i.e., you know that, if you created it in Word, others in your own office and elsewhere will be able to open, use, modify, and save it without any problems - a critical item as documents are exchanged among different parties in a variety of ways in such an environment).
2) It fits in with document-management systems that allow you to create and store your documents, in all their different versions, on local servers that you control and with which you can preserve the confidentiality of client documents.
3) It provides a baseline for determining that new employees will be efficient in their word processing skills (i.e., they must have a minimum set of skills that includes being able to work efficiently in Word).
4) It does all the things the you point out in your items 1-4 (particularly your observations about being bound to the idea of the "page").
Any substitute for Word would need to leave me capable of interacting with clients, staff, fellow workers, opposing attorneys, courts, government agencies, etc. in this same seamless manner without incompatibilities while using the "page" model through which we all are accustomed to relating to one another.
Call it the pull of the legacy, but it is an overwhelming pull. Everything else is bleeding edge from the standpoint of having to run a real business in the current environment.
This does not mean it can never change, but it will not change based merely on an idealized set of ideas of how it can be done better or on something that might work in one environment but does not port well into the standard office.
Isn't that why we have URLs?
As to legal requirements, perhaps Word is insufficient for a system with such strict legal requirements? Maybe a wiki-ish system that strictly enforced all the necessary requirements without requiring humans intervention? But I guess you are saying that the way the laws are written actually require actual pieces of paper to exist. In which case software doesn't help.
I'm curious, though, to know if that is the case or if businesses have sprung up specifically to meet the legal requirements of electronic document management for those vertical industries.
From a student's perspective, taking notes in class in Word is the de facto standard at this point. The outlining mode is intuitive and efficient.
Now let's say we were to replace this with MediaWiki. When I tab and shift-tab it won't indent and un-indent properly. While I'm sure there is Wiki markup to do outlining, there is no way you'd be able to do it fast enough in class while you're trying to get down everything the professor says.
The author, as parent points out, makes the common mistake of assuming what is true for one in a group is true for the entire group.
1) The world is going paperless. Alas, this is not happening. While it's true that some areas, like technical writing and review, have made progress towards this goal, printer supplies remain a truly lucrative market.
2) People prefer software with fewer features. Yes, it's true that people prefer a simple program that does simple things, organizations have laundry lists of things they want and tend to buy the thing that does the most for the cheapest, even if there is overlap (insert long rant about organizational purchasing here)
3) The page metaphor is dead -- it's all web now. This would be great if it were true, but I seriously doubt it. Lots of people (like me) prefer a hard copy of work when editing. In addition, pages give reference points during conversation, stuff like "check out the first sentence in the third paragraph on page 3" which gets very unwieldy without pages
4) Superior collaboration software translates into superior document creation software. Wiki is great. Love it. But in lots of places, like law offices, when you create a document, it has a very specific legal status. It must be kept for a period of time. It must not be edited without a clear trail of edits. Etc. For folks in the healthcare, legal, and insurance world (among others) documents are simply electronic versions of printed pages that have a lot of rules associated with them. This isn't a societal convention as much as it is a legal one. Good luck on getting that changed anytime soon.
Word is a feature-heavy monster, no doubt about it. Nobody uses 99% of all that stuff in there. But there's a long way from making that observation to officiating at its funeral.
The rumors of Word's demise have been greatly exaggerated.