Microsoft Works Suite 2003 Right-Sized Software, Part I Eric Grevstad
Mon 1/13/03 -- It's both a glaringly obvious fact and the dirty little secret of the software market: Most consumers, especially home-PC-using families, don't need a full-powered, feature-packed office suite.
In addition to e-mail and Web surfing, the typical family divides its computing time between light correspondence and maybe home budgeting for the grownups and schoolwork and creative projects -- such as greeting cards or tinkering with digital photos -- for the kids. Throwing such users in at the deep end or expecting them to use more than 10 percent of -- or pay the $479 price of -- mighty Microsoft Office is absurd. Yet Office's stranglehold on the Windows world is so strong that, all too often, that's what happens.
In the DOS days, people knew better, and Microsoft's entry-level integrated package, Works, was joined by several equally affordable alternatives. Today, most software is as supersized as most fast-food meals and SUVs, yet there are a few programs that manage to be scaled down without being dumbed down.
This week, we open a three-part family-software ("Family Feud"? -- Ed.) series with a look at the best known -- Microsoft Works Suite 2003 ($109 with a $15 mail-in rebate), which bundles the latest version of Works with five other titles. We'll follow up with tests of Corel's WordPerfect Family Pack 4 ($69 with a $20 mail-in rebate) and Software602's newly updated 602Pro PC Suite (free).
Almost Confusion-Proof
The core of Works Suite is Microsoft Works 7.0 (available alone for $55 with a $15 mail-in rebate). Works puts a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and appointment calendar behind a friendly front end or Task Launcher interface. The modules look and work like junior versions of their Office counterparts -- the spreadsheet, for instance, able to open Excel worksheets but not workbooks (i.e., limited to a single page instead of multipage or linked spreadsheets), and the database a flat or cardfile-type instead of relational program.
But the modules work nicely. The database offers a choice of index-card-style form or spreadsheet-style list views; the spreadsheet has an "Easy Calc" wizard to steer rookies through the job of creating formulas, and can create and store up to eight simple charts with each worksheet (although it stores them on separate pages, not within the worksheet area as with Excel). The appointment calendar and contact list -- the last usable for mail merge -- are nothing fancy, but quite handy.
And the Task Launcher is a downright impressive example of beginner-friendliness. The home page shows the appointment calendar (one quirk we noticed: a day's appointments appear in the order they were entered, not chronological order) alongside either a list or jumbo-icon view of projects ranging from "Organize the Household" to "Plan a Vacation," each listing a variety of tasks and, if you like, due dates.
You can create your own projects, or switch to views or menus of specific tasks or document templates for the various Works Suite applications. Alternatively, you can switch to a list of the applications and the various tasks or templates available for each. The templates, over 400 of them, are handsome fill-in-the-blank boilerplates for home-oriented printouts ranging from calendars and mailing labels to home inventory lists or car maintenance logs.
The projects and tasks, naturally, reach beyond Works to involve various Microsoft Web sites and the other bundled programs. They're a mixed lot: Streets & Trips 2002 is a less-intuitive-than-we-expected way to examine maps and get driving directions; the maps are good-looking and offer detailed lists of attractions such as restaurants, but we suspect most users nowadays will reach for their Web browser rather than the Streets & Trips CD (the Task Manager, indeed, offers a choice of both) when a map is wanted.
Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2003 makes a similar high-quality-content, minor-hassle-to-insert-the-CD impression, but will definitely help school-report researchers. Picture It Photo is a simple image editor for touch-up functions such as cropping and removing red-eye, teamed here with a variety of label-, card-, and collage-making photo-and-text templates.
Once you get past a painstaking account-information setup procedure -- and get used to its cheery, chatty talking interface (which you can and probably will mute if you prefer to balance your checkbook in peace), Money 2003 Standard offers a capable array of transaction-tracking and budget-watching tools, with online links to financial institutions and services. It doesn't, however, have the retirement-planning and tax-withholding-estimation and deduction-finding features of Money Deluxe.
