Suite success - overview of four evaluations of integrated software programs - individual records searchable under 'Suite Success' - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, March, 1995 by Emerson Andrew Torgan

THE SOFTWARE SUITE, A BUNDLE OF APPLICATIONS FROM a single publisher fine-tuned to work in perfect harmony, is perhaps the greatest contribution to productivity since the advent of the graphical interface. The idea is to take the best programs--a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation graphics package--and give them all common features and functions plus a similar look and feel. When moving from one application to another, you should expect to find the same options on the toolbar as well as pulldown menus that offer such integrated options as dropping spreadsheet data into a database to create a mailing list. In theory, if you learn one program, you've more or less mastered them all.

The software suite has its roots in such integrated software packages as ClarisWorks and Microsoft Works, which offer good, but limited, solutions to the average person's computing needs (see "Give Me the Works," October 1994, for our roundup of integrated software). Suites, on the other hand, are a bit more demanding. As a general rule, you'll need a 486 with 8MB of RAM and about 90MB of free disk space to load one. When it comes to price, however, suites can't be beat. The average standalone application runs around $495. The average suite--which includes four or five applications--costs about $700. You do the math.

In this review, we look at Lotus SmartSuite 3.0, Microsoft Office Professional 4.3, and a prerelease version of Novell's PerfectOffice 3.0 (standard edition). We also look at Microsoft Office Standard for Macintosh 4.2, the only true Mac suite, We evaluated each component's performance and power as a stand-alone application, then on its ability to interact as part of a team (how well it played with others, if you will).

Next, we rated overall integration and ease of use as we moved from program to program, dragging and dropping, cutting and pasting, and importing and exporting data. Finally, we established an overall rating based on the combination of individual strengths and weaknesses, integration, and value as a collection of programs that seek to be the centerpiece of your harddisk drive (see the accompanying chart).

Never before have so many capable programs been made available to the consumer at such tempting prices. Any one of these offerings will more than satisfy the majority of your computing needs. But, as we found out, not all suites are created equal.