COREL WORDPERFECT OFFICE 12

As it isn’t really an option to compete with Microsoft head-on, Corel has always taken an unusual approach with WordPerfect Office, and it continues this with version 12. Essentially, it has tried to make WordPerfect Office as compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 as it possibly can, though to a certain extent it has had little choice in the matter. WordPerfect Office consists of three modules: WordPerfect; Quattro Pro and Presentations. These are Corel’s equivalents of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. That leaves a gaping hole that needs to be filled by an email agent, and while SOHO users may opt for Outlook Express, or one of the Shareware agents, the target SME market will doubtless have their own preferred agent such as Lotus Notes or Outlook. Corel has made WordPerfect Office 12 as fully-compatible with Outlook as any non-Microsoft package could be, but the alternative would be to develop an email agent and that would be a major task.

BUYING DECISIONS

Corel WordPerfect Office 12 is also available in Professional and Education versions, which ship with the Paradox database. One of the problems customers have with Microsoft Office is that file formats are changed on a regular basis, seemingly as part of a policy to drive users to buy new versions of the software on a continual basis. Corel has taken a stance here to differentiate itself from Microsoft by maintaining the original WordPerfect format so you can save files in any version of WordPerfect and then work with them using any version of the software on another PC. The company is also proud that you can install its office suite on a far broader range of operating systems than Microsoft Office, which is only compatible with Windows 2000 or XP. Corel also offers upgrade pricing, based not only on users who own version 8 or later of any Corel office application, or one of a number of its graphics packages, but also users who currently run Microsoft Works 7.0, Works Suite 2000 or Office 2000.

Corel uses this generous range of upgrade paths to justify a claim in America that WordPerfect Office 12 is “available at a cost of up to 63 percent lower than Microsoft Office 2003”. We have to pay £276 (inc. VAT) in the UK, or £135 for an upgrade for WordPerfect Office 12, while Office 2003 has an SRP of £459. However, the Student and Teacher edition of Office 2003 Standard Edition is £100. It gets a little tedious to keep comparing WordPerfect Office with Microsoft Office, but we have little choice as Corel has made this compatibility a major feature of the suite. When you start up any of the applications a dialogue box asks if you want to run the program’s native interface or whether you prefer to run in a mode that looks just like the equivalent Microsoft application. This is the new Workspace Manager at work and it adjusts the menus, buttons, toolbars and commands of, say, WordPerfect to function just like those from Word. This is such a complete transformation that your files will save in Word format instead of WordPerfect. Although there are a couple of minor glitches with keyboard shortcuts that don’t work entirely correctly, no doubt they will be fixed with a patch.

There are two more new components in version 12 that are of some interest to us. The OfficeReady Browser helps you to organise and preview templates, and the browser element allows you to access more templates over the Internet.

Secondly, there is the WordPerfect Wireless Office Suite. This uses the ZIM tool (www.zim.biz) which was introduced in version 11, to add SMS capability to Outlook and Paradox. In version 12 you can add Outlook email and calendar functions, as well as Instant Messaging, to the mobile phones of your company’s road warriors. While these are valid new features they don’t provide a compelling reason to upgrade your current office suite.

RATING: 6

PRICE: £235/£276 (EX/INC. VAT)
KEY FEATURES: OS COMPATIBILITY WINDOWS SERVER 2003, WINDOWS XP, SP1HOME/PRO/TABLET,WINDOWS 2000 SP4, WINDOWS NT4.0 SP6A, WINDOWS 98SE
CONTACT: 01628 589800 WWW.COREL.CO.UK