Corel WordPerfect Family Pack 4 Review Right-Sized Software, Part II Eric Grevstad
Tue 1/21/03 -- At the risk of an unbearable metaphor, you can compare our quest for capable but affordable home-PC software to the Goldilocks story: Low-powered programs like Windows' free WordPad and Paint are too soft, while the super-powered, super-pricey Microsoft Office is too hard. The trick is to find software that's just right in cost, complexity, and capability.
Last week, we began our survey with a look at Microsoft's Works Suite 2003 and found that the integrated Works program came appealingly close to the ideal -- even if Microsoft skewed the set toward the bloated, bells-and-whistles camp by replacing Works' word processor with Word 2002. This week, we can report that Corel Corp. uses a different strategy with WordPerfect Family Pack 4: If Corel found one bowl of porridge that was too cold and one that was too hot, it wouldn't bother to taste the temperate third bowl, but would simply dump the first in with the second.
The Family Grab Bag
Trampled by Microsoft Office in the business suite arena, Corel's WordPerfect word processor and Quattro Pro spreadsheet have lately been moving downmarket, preinstalled on value-priced PCs from HP, Gateway, Dell, and Sony. (Such systems formerly came with Works, but Corel's been offering ultra-low pricing and the Justice Department's been leaning on Microsoft to quit pushing PC vendors to buy Works or Office along with Windows.)
Family Pack 4 is a retail cousin of Corel's value bundle, without the personal finance management that many PC makers provide by adding Intuit's Quicken. For a fire-sale $69 (a $20 rebate coupon in the box makes it $49), you get the full versions of WordPerfect 10 and Quattro Pro 10, along with the Picture Publisher Digital Camera Edition image editor (still wearing its Micrografx label, though Corel acquired that company in October 2001).
School report writers can look up information in Britannica Ready Reference Encyclopedia, while greeting card- and label-makers can use the creative templates of Avery DesignPro. Finally, the suite supplies McAfee VirusScan antivirus and firewall and Dragon NaturallySpeaking Essentials speech recognition or dictation software, complete with a headset microphone for the latter. A Task Manager menu offers categories of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro document types and previews of the 100-odd supplied templates.
This makes WordPerfect Family Pack 4 even less smoothly integrated or more of a grab bag than Works Suite 2003. We grumbled that the latter's setup menu lets you pick which programs to install, then runs successive, discrete installation routines, but Corel's installs only the word processor and spreadsheet; you must insert CDs and install the other programs one at a time, ending up with over a dozen new desktop icons and Start-menu submenus. Similarly, while the printed manual is quite nice, it refers solely to WordPerfect and Quattro Pro; documentation for all the other programs is limited to Adobe Acrobat files.
It also leads to the swinging-between-extremes or mixing-bowls feeling we alluded to earlier: While -- Word 2002 apart -- Works Suite 2003 programs like Works 7.0, Money, and Encarta offer pretty much the same interface and level of complexity (moderate, or friendly yet not skimpy on features), Corel's pendulum swings from the near-limitless power and depth of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro to weak fare like Avery DesignPro and Britannica Ready Reference.
