Office suites

Home Office Computing, Jan, 1999 by Bonny L. Georgia

Today's software bundles don't just cut and paste your data--they anchor all your PC productivity

OFFICE SUITES ARE THE Swiss army knives of the business world. Whether managing direct mailings, crunching sales reports, or polishing important presentations, these all-in-one solutions are powerful enough to handle a whole company's productivity needs, yet still affordable enough for a solitary home office worker.

Unlike unrelated software tools that may or may not play nice with one another, office suite components are designed to work together in harmony. Common interfaces across applications lower the learning curve and put you to work quickly, while easy data exchange saves precious time and effort. For example, when you need to send a sale flyer to your best customers, an office suite lets you import names from your personal information manager (PIM) into your word processor to create a mail merge letter, which in turn might include a list of sale items pulled from your product database.

Suite Productivity Many new PCs ship with an office suite--or a suite's compact cousin, a works package--preinstalled, but that's no guarantee it's the right tool for you.

For this Buyer's Guide, we examined the latest editions of four leading packages: Corel WordPerfect Office Suite 8 Professional, Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition, Microsoft Office 2000 Professional (in beta form), and Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition. Our "Get the Works" sidebar looks at AppleWorks 5, Microsoft Works 4.5, and ArkoseWorks 3.0, alternative packages for the budget-minded or hard disk space-challenged.

Each of the three Windows suites combines a PIM, word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation graphics program; Mac Office has no PIM or database. Since Internet connectivity has become essential for businesses, basic Web authoring and e-mail clients are also common. A host of extras such as clip art, collaboration tools, and reference software can sweeten the deal even more.

Office suites are not cheap--though trade-in or upgrade discounts are common, our packages' list prices range from $350 to $500--so getting good value from your investment is a must. When testing, we put a premium on performance: Does the software make light work of routine tasks and effortlessly share or import data, even from competitors? We also looked for ease of use enhancements such as robust help features, templates, and wizards, as well as assessing the integration between tools and overall Internet friendliness.

The biggest drawback to suites is the toll they take on your hard disk. Expect to fork over 100MB on average; 200MB for a complete install is not unheard of. Luckily, hard disks are cheaper than office suites these days. Though SmartSuite will run on a 486 with 12MB of RAM, the others demand Pentium or PowerPC processors and a minimum 32MB of RAM for optimal performance. Only you can decide which offers the right combination of features and price to run your business, but we're confident you'll find one of these powerhouses up to the challenge.

Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 Professional

BEST BUY

Score: 8.5
V 9
P 8
E 8
S 9

Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 stuffs your PC with more applications, utilities, and add-ons than MSG at a Chinese restaurant buffet.

Besides its flagship WordPerfect word processor, Quattro Pro spreadsheet, Paradox database, and Corel Presentations slide show application, you also get the Time Line project management program, CorelCentral organization and communication tool (with built-in version of Netscape Communicator 4.0), and Web. SiteBuilder for easy HTML page creation.

Past versions of WordPerfect were plagued with inconsistent toolbars and confusing menus. Thankfully, WordPerfect 8's core applications are now endowed with consistent design elements that bring new users up to speed quickly. Toolbar clutter is reduced by context-sensitive Property Bars, which redraw to include only tools relevant to the item you've selected--click on a graphics image in Presentations, and you'll see different icons and features than when plain text is selected.

The Application Bar found at the bottom of each document provides access to open Quattro Pro, Presentations, and WordPerfect documents. Just click the document name to move between files, or copy data from one document by pointing to another on the Application Bar and clicking Paste. Integration could be tighter here, however--the Application Bar in WordPerfect, for example, does not show files that are open simultaneously in Quattro Pro, and the overall setup lacks the convenience of Lotus's SmartCenter.

By far the best enhancement across the suite is the addition of PerfectExpert. Part tutor, part coach, this wizard-like interface walks you through the creation of dozens of documents, from year-end reports and invoices to company newsletters. It even helps you make calendar entries in the CorelCentral PIM. Though the idea of wizards is not unique, Corel one-ups Microsoft and Lotus by letting you tackle steps as you like, not in a predetermined order.