Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Home Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this product needing to work on a personal legal (nonbusiness) matter, so the noncommercial license was fine for my "home" use. Good thing I checked with Corel after buying it and seeing the "Home Edition" captions not only on the total suite packaging but underneath the "WordPerfect" and "Quattro Pro" components (inside front box folding cover with velcro). Corel ultimately confirmed to me that "certain components that are designed for the business customer, such as Legal Tools, MetaData Removal, Document Compare, Quickfinder to name a few are not included in the Home Edition version." Corel needs to make this clearer in their marketing of the "Home Edition." I focused on the word processing application, but the Quattro Pro application is also captioned as "Home Edition" so it may be missing some features available in the Quattro Pro included in other Suite versions (Standard, Pro, Student/Teacher, etc.). The Home Edition may still be suitable for some users, but I'm a strong believer in "full disclosure." WordPerfect itself is a great program. Try setting point sizes with decimals in Word -- you can't. Try changing the size of the font in legal pleadings in Word -- there's no direct control of it (the Microsoft site instructs you to change margins and number of lines per page to attempt to get Word to adjust the font size) [but remember, you need any WordPerfect version other than Home Edition to get Legal Tools].

Click Here to see more reviews about: Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Home Edition

WordPerfect Office X3 is everything you'd expect from an office suite -- and more -- for less. Enhanced compatibility ensures that you can work with people who use Microsoft Office or other office suites. Each application in the suite has been updated with stylish new buttons and toolbars to provide more familiar and easy-to-use environments. Plus, groundbreaking new features and enhancements make this the most enticing and innovative WordPerfect Office yet. With the WordPerfect Office X3 Home Edition you also get great photo, video, DVD creation, and security software.
Great Compatibility WordPerfect Office continues to break down compatibility barriers for its users. These days, who has time to figure out which product works with which file format? You want to simply and easily open, edit, save, and senddocuments and spreadsheets. To that end, WordPerfect Office X3 provides improved support for Microsoft Office file formats. In addition, the suite's built-in PDF publishing capabilities have been enhanced, making it easier than ever to exchange information.
Incredible Ease of Use WordPerfect Office X3 provides exciting new features that are designed to reduce the need for software expertise. The user interface for each application has been refreshed, providing more intuitive, familiar environments. Context-sensitive toolbars make it easy to identify tools and features. You can copy HTML and paste clean, unformatted text. The unmatched Corel RealTime Preview lets you see how potential formatting changes will affect your work before you commit to them. To help new users find their footing, the Workspace Manager can simulate the keystrokes and menu items of other office suites, such as Microsoft Office. The unobtrusive PerfectExpert is a handy guide and consultant for virtually any project. Plus, two free hours of training videos by lynda.com are included on CD.
Home Edition Applications Designed with the specific needs of home computer users in mind, WordPerfect Office X3 Home Edition provides eight leading home PC tools in one complete package. It includes WordPerfect X3 Home Edition for word processing, Quattro Pro X3 Home Edition for spreadsheets and charts, two WordPerfect OfficeReady template collections, Corel Photo Album 6 Standard Edition for managing digital photo collections, Pinnacle Studio SE for editing home videos, Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD LE v8 for burning CDs and DVDs, and Norton Internet Security 2006 for protection from viruses and other threats. This compatible, feature-rich, value-packed suite is sure to make your entire household's computing experience more enjoyable, creative, and secure.
On top of all that, WordPerfect Office X3 includes 9,500 clipart images, 175 photos, and 900 TrueType fonts.
WordPerfect X3: WordPerfect X3 provides exceptional ease of use and complete formatting control for producing newsletters, articles, reports, proposals, books, and other documents. The popular Reveal Codes, Corel RealTime Preview, and Legal features help reduce the amount of time you spend on document formatting, freeing you to focus on creating content. WordPerfect X3 also provides enhanced compatibility with Microsoft Word, the new ability to import PDFs, and robust PDF publishing capabilities, ensuring that you can freely exchange information with colleagues and clients, regardless of the software they use.
Quattro Pro X3: Quattro Pro X3 is a powerful spreadsheet application that helps you organize, analyze, report, manage, and share important data and financial information. Improved compatibility with Microsoft Excel ensures that you can smoothly exchange information with Excel users. Quattro Pro X3 also includes outstanding tools for creating tables, financial forms, lists, databases, charts, reports, or any other type of data-oriented document. In addition, you can easily present your spreadsheet data in charts, and you can apply advanced rendering to your charts to give the information a professional, polished look.

Click here for more information about Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Home Edition

Read More...

Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition Upgrade Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've been using this software for about three months now and have installed it on seven or eight different machines that I maintain, and honestly, the best I can say is that the actual upgrade process is very smooth--this Office suite comes on one CD instead of two, it scans for previous versions, offers full installation options, and explains very clearly what it is doing. When I upgraded to Office 2000, the software took upwards of an hour; with XP, the upgrades took from ten to forty minutes, depending on the speed of the machine I was upgrading to.
You will first notice how nice everything looks and the new "Smart Pane," which is supposed to be a window with what Office thinks you will want to do. The contents of this pane include your most recently used documents and options to create new documents.
The menus look a lot like the DHTML effects common on many web sites--menu options are "highlighted" when you mouse over them. A few other things have changed, but the changes are mostly cosmetic.
The Smart Pane, which is really more of a "pain" than a "pane," is obtrusive to me--I am what is called a "power user," i.e., I use MS Office for about four hours a day, rely on it, and am very familiar with it. When I open an application, I want wide, open space. I often close the Smart Pane without using its features, instead opening documents the way I have for years-either by opening them from the Work menu I added or by clicking to them. This Smart Pane is supposed to close when you open something, but sometimes it doesn't, meaning I have to click to close it.
Worse, the Smart Pane automatically opens when you want to do something it thinks requires many options. For example, if I want to modify a style in Word, the Smart Pane appears and offers me myriad options for editing my styles. This whole process of opening the Smart Pane slows everything down (I'm running a Pentium III 933 mHz with 128 mb RAM and a 7200 rpm ultra ATA hard drive with relatively few applications installed; got to keep it clean!!).
Editing styles provides a good example of how bloated the software is. You may recall from Office 2000 that all the styles were either built in or created by the user. Now, however, XP creates new styles based on what it finds in your document. For example, if you have a italicized one of your Heading 1s, XP will show the regular Heading 1 style and the Heading 1 style with italics. Imagine how many such styles you might have in your document; with these new additions, XP has easily doubled or tripled the number of styles I must wade through to get the one I want.
XP slows down every machine it's loaded on. My oldest machine, a Dell Pentium 75 running Win 98, was still chugging along quite nicely, even with Office 2000 installed. Now, however, after I've installed XP on it, it moves so slowly that it's almost laughable-clicked buttons bubble up comically. The worst part is that the computer is much, much slower, even if I'm not using any of the XP applications. I guess there's too much XP stuff now running in the background.
I have a few gripes with Word, many related to printing problems, but one is particularly laughable, typical of Microsoft. Now, when Word crashes, it politely tells you that it has done so and offers to send a report of the problem to Bill. It swears that it won't send any personal data. The first few times I saw this, I thought, sure, why not, send it, maybe it'll help. Hah! Each time, without fail, my computer froze! So, instead of having just one program crash, I ended up with a frozen machine. Remember, I'm primarily using a new, major name machine with little other software installed. Learned not to do that real quick!
There is one change I do like in Word. Since I do a lot of editing for a living, I find the new style of showing comments much better than the previous method. In Office 2000, comments were shown as "sticky notes" that appeared when you moused over them. Now, however, the comments appear as neat rounded squares in the margin. They look good on the screen and they print out well for others to read.
Another major reason I upgraded was because of a fatal flaw in FrontPage 2000. I have detailed more of this problem in my review of FP2002, but essentially, FP2000 could not publish my web site because it was too large. I was hoping that the bundled FP2002 would have fixed that bug. It did, but it has other compatibility issues that MS hasn't been able to resolve with most web hosts.
My relatively low rating is for the upgrade, not for the overall quality of the product. The product, which crashes at least as frequently as Office 2000, seems to be no more functional than its predecessor, meaning that the upgrade is necessary only for those who want to have the latest thing. The best news is that I've learned how to take advantage of MS's support discussion groups. The answers and workarounds I found in those groups were a thousand times more helpful than MS's pitiful Help or canned tech support messages. Again: Don't pay for support-go to their support groups for help first.
In short, this is something of a "non-upgrade," and will most likely cause more problems than it will fix.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition Upgrade

Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition Upgrade includes the 2002 versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, andFrontPage.
New context-sensitive smart tags pop up with options you need--right whenyou need them. No digging through menus. Tasks that once required multiplesteps are just one click away with the new task pane. New and improved tools in Access allow you to build and manage lists and databases, or analyzeinformation from databases such as Microsoft SQL Server.
The new version of Outlook in Office XP Professional condenses all your personal and professional e-mail into one central location, even your Web-based e-mail accounts like Hotmail. With AutoRecover, your work is saved at regular intervals while you work. PowerPoint includes animation effects and custom slide transitions. An editable print preview assures that your printed slides anddocuments come out right the first time.
Microsoft Publisher 2002 provides professional page layout and text toolsto help you create compelling marketing materials for your business.FrontPage 2002 lets you create exactly the Web site you want withgraphics-rich, hyperlinked, sound-enabled Web pages. New tools andfeatures like automatic Web content, PowerPoint-like drawing capabilities,a streamlined user interface, and optional HTML and XML reformatting makethis a complete Web site creation and management tool.

Click here for more information about Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition Upgrade

Read More...