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New WordPerfect grants users wishes

REVIEW: COREL IMPROVES SUITES USABILITY WITH PRACTICAL PDF, METADATA, SEARCH FEATURES
By Anne Chen

ordperfect office X3the latest version of Corels productivity suitecomes packed with new features that make it a stronger competitor than ever to Microsofts dominant Office. Armed with the ability to natively import and export word processing documents to PDFas well as to export spreadsheets and presentations to PDFWordPerfect Office X3 has features were still waiting for from Microsoft Office (or dont expect to see until the next Office update, due at the end of this year). The new Corel office suite also boasts improved compatibility with Microsoft Office applications, an updated interface, a new mail client and the ability to strip documents of metadataamong other thingsmaking it a good upgrade for existing shops and worthy of consideration for organizations looking for a Microsoft Office alternative. Enterprises heavily invested in Microsoft Office, however, should wait for the release of Office 12, as Microsoft is currently calling the update, before performing any kind of side-by-side comparisons. Released in January,WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition comprises the WordPerfect word processor, Quattro Pro spreadsheet application, Presentations slide maker, Presentations Graphics image and graphics editing program, and WordPerfect Mail e-mail client. WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition has a retail price

of $299 and $159 to upgrade. Microsofts Office, in contrast, can cost as much as $500 per seat retail without volume licensing. Volume licensing for WordPerfect Office X3 is available, and Corel will honor the upgrade price for users of both the WordPerfect and Microsoft Office suites. WordPerfect Office X3 Professional Edition, which is available by site license, includes a software developers kit and the Paradox database. Paradox has been enhanced to connect to external databases via ODBC DSN (ODBC Data Source Name) under Windows XP Service Pack 2. Free and lower-priced office productivity suites are availablesuch as OpenOffice.orgs OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 and Sun Microsystems StarOffice 8 but organizations considering a switch would need to factor in training costs for these likely unfamiliar office suites. Even Microsoft Office shops planning to upgrade to the next version of Microsoft Office will have to figure in such costs, as Office 12 will have dramatic interface changes that users may have difficulty handling at first. WordPerfects advantage here is its ability to mimic Office 2003s look and feel, as well as save in Offices document file formats.

WordPerfect Office X3 is the first productivity suite to natively import and export word processing documents to PDF (top screen), and all its core applications, including the Quattro Pro spreadsheet, now have the ability to publish documents to the PDF format (middle screen). This new version of WordPerfect also adds an e-mail client, WordPerfect Mail, with a built-in RSS reader (bottom screen).

Core applications
during kweek labs tests of WordPerfect Office X3, we were pleased with the suites core applications. We also experienced fairly good results when opening and creating Microsoft Office-formatted

documents with WordPerfect Office X3. We did encounter some small inconsistencies during our testing that required tweaks to preserve the appearance of the documents we imported. We also ran into

some formatting issues when importing WordPerfect Office X3 documents into Microsoft Office 2003. While this may not seem like a big deal, 99 percent of businesses use Microsoft
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Office, and organizations that dont use Microsoft Office need to ensure that their documents can be viewed correctly by those that do. Businesses can ensure that their documents render appropriately for those who arent using WordPerfect by taking

advantage of the suites PDF export feature. All the core applications in WordPerfectWordPerfect, Quattro Pro and Presentations now have the ability to export to PDF. A tool bar allows users to easily convert documents, spreadsheets and presentations into PDFs with one click.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition

The folks in Redmond had better be paying attention: The latest update to Corels WordPerfect suite (www.corel.com) offers features that we want to see in Microsofts upcoming KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS Office 12. WordPerfect Office CAPABILITY EXCELLENT X3 Standard Edition has the abiliINTEROPERABILITY GOOD ty to natively import and export PERFORMANCE GOOD word processing documentsas FILE FORMAT COMPATIBILITY GOOD well as export spreadsheets and presentationsto PDF. In addition, the Corel productivity suite strips metadata from documents, offers built-in Yahoo Web search and comes with a new mail client featuring an RSS reader. While the PDF importing needs work, WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition is a must-upgrade for existing shops and worthy of consideration for organizations looking for a Microsoft Office alternative. COST ANALYSIS: WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition offers enough enhancements to warrant its upgrade price of $159. The retail price is $299, and volume licensing is available. For companies looking to move off Microsoft Office, there are several free office productivity suites from which to choose, but none has an interface that Office users will find as familiar as WordPerfects. And with Microsoft planning to make huge changes to Offices interface, it may be cheaper to train current Office users on WordPerfect than it would be on the forthcoming Office 12.

WordPerfect is also the first office suite with the ability to natively import an Adobe Systems Acrobat file, edit its contents and resave that file as a PDF or in another format. In tests, we found that the PDF import feature needs some work, particularly with heavily formatted documents. However, the feature worked fine with straight text documents and will come in handy for users who work with such files. Microsoft has announced that, with Office 12, documents

can be saved to the PDF format, but it is still unclear whether Office 12 will allow users to import and rework PDF files. WordPerfect Office X3 will support Office 12s OpenXML format. The Corel suite will not support OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications standard, although Corel remains an active participant on the OASIS technical committee for ODF. (For more on ODF, see story, below.)
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ODF gains support

NE OF THE BIGGEST ISSUES IT MANAGERS FACE WHEN CONSIDering an alternative to Microsofts Office productivity suite

EVALUATION SHORTLIST
Projects KOffice 1.4.2 For users of Linux and other KDE-supported platforms, KOffice offers broad functionality and excellent desktop integration (www.koffice.org) N Microsofts Office 2003 and earlier versions The file formats exclusive to Microsofts market-leading Office suite are a de facto standard, giving Office a definite edge in this area (office.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx) N OpenOffice.orgs OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 The wholly open-source sibling of StarOffice typically provides tight integration with Linux distributions and is free (www.openoffice.org) N Sun Microsystems StarOffice 8 StarOffice 8 supports multiple OS platforms, and its Document Analysis wizard helps determine where compatibility issues with Microsoft Office may surface (www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/index.jsp) N ThinkFrees ThinkFree Office 3 Server Edition As opposed to client-based applications, the server-based ThinkFree Office 3 makes it easier for IT managers to deploy, manage and support multiple OS platforms (www.thinkfree.com) 46 e W E E K n J A N U A R Y 3 0 , 2 0 0 6
N KDE

is file format compatibility. With 99 percent of the business world running Microsoft Office, IT managers need to ensure that their users can create documents that business partners, suppliers and customers can open and view without problems. While Office alternatives such as Corels WordPerfect and OpenOffice.orgs OpenOffice.org do a pretty good job when it comes to compatibility with Microsoft Office documents, theyre not perfect. During the last year, support for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications standard, an open format that can be used in any software, has gained momentum. ODF, which covers applications such as word processors, presentations and spreadsheets, uses XML data tagging to format and store documents. The standard is supported, most notably, by the OpenOffice.org productivity suite. ODF support among all office suites would be of great benefit to enterprises. Users would be able to view any document with the productivity suite of their choice without having to worry about file format compatibility. Since the commonwealth of Massachusetts decision to standardize on ODF, a number of vendors also have voiced support for the standard. Novell, for example, announced in January that it plans to provide complete ODF support in its next release of SUSE Enterprise Desktop, due this year. Other vendors that have thrown their support behind ODF include Google, IBM and Sun Microsystems. Not all productivity suite vendors offer ODF support, though. ThinkFree and Corel, for example, will support Microsofts competing Open XML when Office 12 is released. Corel has chosen not to support ODF in its recent WordPerfect X3 release (see review, starting on Page 45). The reason: Corel executives said that customers havent asked for it. Anne Chen
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JIM RAPOZA: TECH DIRECTIONS
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First impressions count on Web

POOR SITE DESIGN CAN TURN POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS OFFFOR GOOD
some of the worst- and best-scoring Web sites oure the greatest! from the study. The worst were clearly bad, Well, maybe youre with one being the Web equivalent of a loud, not the greatest, but, brightly colored plaid leisure suit. in my book, youre pretty But some of the high scorers dont provide OK just for regularly readmuch guidance, either. Some looked pretty ing my columns and good, but a couple were the type that I find reviews. annoying and that many readers have told me Now I have to come they dislikesites that have lots of moving clean about that opening Flash graphics and distracting menus. statementits simply a shameless attempt on So, creating a well-designed site isnt as my part to get people to really like my columns. easy as copying what these high-scoring sites Why would I do this? Because a recent have done. But that doesnt mean Web site study on Web site design claims that visitors designers should simply give up. to a Web site decide if they like or dislike the First, make sure you arent a dont example site in a split second, as the site loads. Using when it comes to your Web site. Avoid the that logic, I figured that starting off with flatmost common mistakes, such as overcluttering tery would work for a column. the page, using ads or animations that cover But is what the study suggests really true? content, and incorporating unintuitive navigaDo content, trust and quality mean nothing if tion elements. visitors dont like the look of the site? If competing sites are eating your lunch trafUnfortunately, especially for organizations ficwise, check them out. Good design probably whose sites are poorly designed, this study is has a lot to do with it. So far, no one has paton to something. After all, weve all had that ented good Web design principles, so feel free immediate blech reaction when loading an to learn from what your unattractive site. This study also follows ONE PERSONS GREAT WEB competitors are doing right and emulate that in along with the theory SITE IS ANOTHER PERSONS your own site design. discussed in a popular I might humbly add book from last year, MalANNOYING SINKHOLE. that an article I wrote last colm Gladwells Blink: year, Good Web design pays dividends (www. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1769591,00.asp), which essentially posits that people make provides some more useful information about most major decisions in a split second. how to go about improving your site design. During the course of the study, which was To me, the most important thing about this conducted at Carleton University in Ontario study isnt that people make a split-second deciand published in the journal Behaviour & sion about a Web site based on its design; its Information Technology, researchers asked that, no matter how long it takes to realize it, subjects to view Web pages for 50 to 500 the site design matters a whole lot. Companies milliseconds. The researchers found that subshould pay close attention to that. There are too jects formed an opinion about a site in as litmany Web sites out there that arent very good. tle as 50 ms and that this initial split-second A study such as this one should remind busidecision carried over into subsequent opinnesses that their site is the face of their comions about the site. So, I guess Mom was right about the impor- pany for most customers. You dont want customers to dislike the way you look. tance of making a good first impression. Now, Hey, you got all the way to the bottom of all you Web site designers: Get out there and this column. That must mean that my little make a Web site that people will love instantly. youre the greatest gimmick worked. Or, But just how do you do that? Well, thats the maybe you like me, you really like me. problemone persons great Web site is Nah, must have been the gimmick. another persons annoying sinkhole. In an article at WebSiteOptimization.com (www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/ Labs Director Jim Rapoza can be reached at blink/), the studys lead researcher shared jim_rapoza@ziffdavis.com.

End-user focus
during testing, it was obvious that Corel had users needs top of mind when developing WordPerfects new features. For example, we appreciated how the word count is now displayed at the bottom of the WordPerfect word processor. We also liked that Yahoo Search is embedded into the word processor, which allowed us to do quick Web searches without leaving our documents. We were able to highlight text in a WordPerfect document and select Search With Yahoo from the right-click menu to get search results within a browser window. Two other new tools we liked allowed us to strip formatting or metadata from documents. Using the right-click menu, we could remove formatting from text copied from Web pages before pasting it into a document. We could also save documents without metadata, which could prevent the embarrassment of having comments, history or other hidden information uncovered by other users.

Mail call heeded

in past wordperfect reviews, weve lamented the suites lack of an e-mail client. Were lamenting no more, as WordPerfect Office X3 comes with the new WordPerfect Mail client. After testing with the WordPerfect Mail client for a few weeks, we found ourselves relying on the built-in RSS reader to keep up-to-date. We also like that the client automatically indexes everything, allowing us to instantly retrieve our messages. (Who wouldve thought the ability to search through thousands of messages without a third-party add-on would come in so handy?) Senior Writer Anne Chen can be reached at anne_chen@ ziffdavis.com.
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