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January 15, 2002

Office Suites Just Got Sweeter

By Carol Holzberg, Ph.D.

Spreadsheets, drawing tools, word processing, and more-these new productivity suites have just about any application you and your students might need.

By the time they graduate high school, your students will be expected to know how to word process, create spreadsheets and charts, and display information in electronic presentations. Fortunately, these are the basic tool sets provided by all five of the office suites we review here. All have their own versions of these key applications, but each offers unique features to meet the needs of different users. For example, AppleWorks is a good choice for students at any grade level because of its intuitive interface and icon-based tools, while Lotus SmartSuite is best for high school career training and business-minded courses. Microsoft's Office XP, Sun's StarOffice Deluxe, and Corel's WordPerfect Office all provide comparable, affordably priced packages ideal for academic use.

Users can count on several shared features in each suite package. For starters, bundled applications generally use the same spell checker, thesaurus, and dictionary. They sport similar menu bars and drop-down menus. Functions, commands, and keyboard shortcuts that work in one program tend to work in the others. As a result of this sharing, once you know your way around one suite application, it's much easier to learn the others. Working with integrated suites also saves hard disk space, conserves system resources during operation, and generally costs less than purchasing the same applications separately. All products we reviewed are high-quality suite offerings that will meet most basic classroom productivity needs. The differences among them are in the details, so we've focused our efforts on highlighting the distinguishing features of these powerful software packages.

AppleWorks 6.2 for OS X (Apple Computer)

While most of the suites reviewed here consist of stand-alone applications digitally stitched together to work seamlessly, AppleWorks is actually a single application with six modules that users can have open simultaneously for easy switching between documents. Since everything is in one place, modules are easy for young children to navigate and learn, especially with the help of project assistants that lead early learners through sample tasks.

Teachers will welcome the new features unique to this version of AppleWorks. For starters, kids can spell check documents written in Spanish if they install the free Spanish dictionary included with the program. An Auto-Save option saves documents automatically at a user-specified time interval, thereby minimizing possible data loss. A new Paste Function command in the spreadsheet module provides instant access to more than 100 spreadsheet and database calculation functions, and the Table Frame tool in the word processor allows students to draw tables anywhere they want and include pictures, sounds, or movies, in addition to text and formulas. A Preview button in the Print dialog box generates a PDF (Portable Document Format) preview, which you can save for use with Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.

AppleWorks 6.2 is certainly fast and user-friendly, but it's got a few kinks. For example, while users can revert to the last saved version of a document, the program lacks support for multiple "undos." It also won't recognize dictionary, hyphenation, or thesaurus files from previous versions of AppleWorks, and headers in spreadsheets produced in earlier versions of the program often import incorrectly. And, unlike the other suites included in this review, AppleWorks operates with a flat file database manager, rather than the more robust relational database manager. Even so, while modules in AppleWorks 6.2 are not as feature-rich as corresponding applications in Microsoft Office, early learners, technophobic teachers, and financially strapped schools will appreciate how easy to use and functional this productivity tool kit can be. It's also the only Macintosh productivity suite to offer native support for OS X.

Office XP Professional (Microsoft)

Microsoft Office XP Professional consists of five powerful applications that share menus, toolbars, commands, keyboard shortcuts, and Smart Tags. Office XP features of particular interest to teachers and students include its many task wizards, assistants, and templates for designing Web pages, setting up databases, and developing presentations. Office XP also boasts multilingual editing, thanks to bundled foreign-language spelling and grammar checkers. Install Proofing Tools for French, Spanish, and English (proofing tools for other languages must be purchased separately), and your students can easily translate words from one language to another as they create Word documents. In addition, users can save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents as HTML-formatted Web pages, and then preview how documents will look when viewed with a Web browser. Engaging WordArt special effects, a friendly table tool (though not as feature-rich as the table tool in Corel's WordPerfect 2002), and cross-platform support give this productivity suite clout. High-end speech recognition features allow voice commands to dictate text in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and e-mail. For continuous speech to work, however, you'll need to purchase a headset microphone and train the program to recognize your voice. Features new to Office XP only add to its long-standing ease of use and rich work tools.

SmartSuite, Millennium Edition 9.6 (Lotus)

This made-for-business program has much to recommend it, combining several stand-alone applications under one integrated suite roof and offering a SmartCenter master control console to manage all SmartSuite applications and documents.

SmartSuite applications are best for schools and districts committed to Internet work. It's the only productivity suite here that includes a Web site publishing tool (FastSite) for customizing Web sites built with SmartSuite documents. FastSite converts SmartSuite documents into HTML format (without requiring that students know HTML) and has a built-in FTP function for going live with a newly built site.

Teachers and students will appreciate word processor Word Pro's proofing tools for French, Spanish, and other languages. Word Pro also features user-friendly Cycle icons that let users quickly click through formatting options for typeface, style, color, and more. Additionally, those working with documents created in corresponding Microsoft Office applications will be able to open and read them in SmartSuite. Teachers will especially like SmartSuite's ScreenCam movie feature that lets them run through a demonstration of an application feature on their own computer, save the demo as a ScreenCam movie, and then distribute it to students. Best of all, SmartSuite will run on a computer equipped with a 486 processor (to run ViaVoice speech recognition requires a Pentium), making it a good choice for schools with older equipment.

StarOffice 5.2 Deluxe (Sun Microsystems)

Educators who want a high-powered, low-cost, Windows-based productivity suite will find it in Sun's StarOffice Deluxe. The package comes in two versions: a free but hefty 100MB Web download; or for schools without a high-speed connection, an inexpensive CD version is available.

Lots of helpful assistant tools characterize StarOffice Deluxe. Pop-up ToolTips describe toolbar buttons. A "Did you know?" tip of the day provides program instruction. An optional Help Agent offers context-sensitive help. Despite all this assistance, StarOffice can still be confusing. Launch the program and it takes over your desktop, displaying screen icons in an Explorer-like view with a collection of links. Close some windows, however, and you can get right down to work.

In addition to the standard suite applications, students and educators will appreciate new options for adding tables and graphics to word processing documents and charts to spreadsheets. Math students can turn on the formula bar in StarOffice Writer to perform complex mathematical operations in table cells. Ideal for multiuser lab environments, StarOffice allows users to password protect documents, configure applications to save documents automatically, import Microsoft Office documents (even XP files), save documents in Office-compatible formats, and much more. For schools searching for an affordable package of integrated applications, StarOffice Deluxe delivers the basics and beyond.

WordPerfect Office 2002, Academic Edition (Corel Corporation)

WordPerfect Office 2002 provides a robust alternative to Microsoft Office XP, delivering five integrated stand-alone productivity tools at a reasonable price. The suite features numerous PerfectExpert project templates to simplify document creation. While most templates are geared to business applications, many will help teachers and students produce resumes, newsletters, banners, monthly calendars, budgets, and grading sheets. Teachers and students responsible for managing Web content will appreciate the Publish to PDF option available in WordPerfect 10 and Corel Presentations 10. HTML publishing options are also available in WordPerfect 10 and Quattro Pro, so Web-savvy users can convert existing documents into Web-compatible format. What's more, any WordPerfect document can be assigned a password.

The Table creation tool in WordPerfect 10 is one of its most salient features. With just the click of a mouse, a SpeedFormat option applies a particular look to table data (similar to Microsoft Word's AutoFormat tool). Additionally, WordPerfect's table formula toolbar also supports powerful math calculations. Users can easily enter formulas in tables, copy formulas with relative references, and perform a host of calculations involving selected cells. WordPerfect's table tools, not to mention its competitive pricing, are good reasons to become a dedicated user.

Carol Holzberg, Ph.D., serves as technology coordinator at three schools in western Massachusetts.

Editor's note: T&L's staff and editors evaluate only those products we can endorse for educational use. Web site reviews are based on content and tools that are available and accurate at the date of publication.

We'd like to thank Apple Computer and Gateway for loaning us the equipment to perform in-house evaluations.

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