The ‘other’ office suite has had a makeover, and it’s now a real contender. Corel’s WordPerfect Office X3 offers improved compatibility, security and formatting capabilities, built-in PDF creation tools, and extended open standards support. Overall, WordPerfect Office X3 (the name was adjusted to avoid calling it version 13) is a fantastic suite that offers pretty much everything a regular business user requires - it also lacks most of the nuisances of Microsoft’s Office.

Corel’s WordPerfect Office X3 family of desktop productivity software is the newest version of the world’s leading alternative to Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office. Providing enhanced compatibility with Microsoft’s Office (it would be stupid not to, wouldn’t it?), as well as improved ease of use and value, WordPerfect Office X3 sets a new standard for content re-use and is the first and only office suite to natively import and export word processing, spreadsheets and presentations to PDF - thus saving you further money by not having to renew your Adobe Acrobat license.

In addition to PDF import (the next version of Microsoft’s Office, due by the end of the year, will also support PDFs), WordPerfect Office X3 offers a wide variety of new and enhanced features, including a new e-mail client, a fresh new user interface, new online resources, enhanced multilingual character support and the powerful ability to easily eliminate hidden metadata. These new capabilities are complemented by the suite’s beloved classic features - such as RealTime preview, context-sensitive toolbars and task-oriented wizards.

The WordPerfect Office X3 family features a selection of critical business products. The Standard Edition (£275) reviewed here is made up of WordPerfect X3 for word processing, Quattro Pro X3 for working with spreadsheets, and Presentations X3 for creating and viewing multimedia presentations. The Standard Edition also includes WordPerfect MAIL, a solid e-mail application, and Presentations Graphics X3 for creating graphics and editing images. There are another three editions of the software, each of which include a 2-hour CD-ROM of training videos.

The Home Edition (£59), developed for households, includes WordPerfect X3 - Home Edition, Quattro Pro X3 - Home Edition, Corel Photo Album 6 - Standard Edition (image manager), Pinnacle Studio SE (vide editor), Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD LE v8 (DVD creation), Norton Internet Security 2006 (Internet security), plus two WordPerfect OfficeReady Template Packs (Personal Finance and Home and School Essentials).

Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Professional Edition (£375) includes many of the same enterprise-grade capabilities of Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition, plus Paradox (database), Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications, and network deployment-, macro- and VBA programming guides. The Professional Edition also includes the WordPerfect Office X3 Software Development Kit (SDK), including the specifications of the WordPerfect file format.

Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Student and Teacher Edition has been developed for the education and not-for-profit markets, making WordPerfect X3, Quattro Pro X3, Presentations X3 and the relational database Paradox available at the aggressive price of £85. Eligible buyers also benefit from flexible licensing that permits this version to be installed on up to three PCs. In addition, most Corel products are available to eligible organisations for one low price via a value-packed site license program.

One of the key enhancements of WordPerfect Office X3 is PDF import and suite-wide publishing to PDF. WordPerfect X3 natively imports PDF documents, making it easy to reuse text and graphics stored in this format. Suite-wide PDF export capabilities also enables you to turn documents, spreadsheets and presentations into PDF files without additional PDF software, making sharing content via the open PDF format simple and cost-effective.

Improvements to compatibility in each of WordPerfect X3, Quattro Pro X3 (weaker than Excel) and Presentations X3 ensure it is easy to open, edit and save Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files which, with PDF, are among today’s most widely exchanged file formats. You can work with Microsoft Office files, or choose from the more than 150 other formats supported by WordPerfect Office X3.

One of the single greatest features WordPerfect has over Microsoft’s Word is the ability to see all of the underlying code and edit it. In Word, most of the codes are hidden and unavailable. Another is the greatly decreased file size when a document is saved in Word format. And where Word automatically reformats documents without asking permission, WordPerfect waits for your command - including a command that reformats your work to fit a specified number of pages.

Sleek new buttons and toolbars give WordPerfect Office X3 a clean new user environment that should be familiar to existing WordPerfect Office customers and former Microsoft Office users alike. Customisable features such as the easy to use Workspace Manager let you select the work environment of your choice with the click of a button, choosing from a variety of WordPerfect and Microsoft Word modes.

An absolute must-have feature any time confidentiality is a concern. WordPerfect X3 makes it easy to quickly remove private or sensitive data that can be hidden in, but easily extracted from, office productivity documents. You can also enjoy enhanced Web integration with the new ability to access online resources, both from Corel and Yahoo!, and quickly conduct Web searches directly from within WordPerfect X3.

A full-featured and easy to use e-mail application, WordPerfect MAIL (based on Stata Lab’s Bloomba e-mail client) provides e-mail, calendar, contact management and RSS capabilities - along with a speedy search function and full indexing. Additional new features save you time and effort with ease-of-use and formatting feature enhancements. For instance, there’s the enhanced PerfectExpert with its new templates and helpful advice, enhanced Word Count capabilities, new Migration Manager, enhanced Paste without Formatting feature, and the ability to view and print documents from within a Web browser.

WordPerfect Office X3 is a solid office suite that’s better value than Microsoft’s competing products. But it’s not perfect. For instance, Presentations X3 lacks PowerPoint’s snazzy effects, graphics-editing features are unspectacular, and Quattro Pro X3 is less powerful than recent versions of Microsoft’s Excel. And while the built-in e-mail client is solid, it looks and feels different to the rest of the suite. While Sun’s StarOffice 8.0 is more of an Office clone in terms of looks and feel, and the excellent OpenOffice.org 2.0 is free, WordPerfect Office X3 is still worth a look. [8]

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BIOS, Jan 25, 06 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Business