602Pro PC Suite 2001 Review Right-Sized Software, Part III Eric Grevstad
Mon 1/27/03 -- You've heard of the 80/20 rule of software -- the fact that 80 percent of users are satisfied with 20 percent of a program's features. It's the theory behind our three-part search for more family- and budget-friendly alternatives to the mammoth Microsoft Office suite. But after checking out Microsoft Works Suite 2003 and Corel WordPerfect Family Pack 4, will we find 80/20 software from Software602?
Software602 is a Czech company (with a U.S. branch in Florida) that offers a word processor, spreadsheet, and image editor at a price that undercuts even Microsoft's and Corel's bargain bundles: free. 602Pro PC Suite 2001 -- as it's still called, though the package we reviewed then received several minor revisions or upgrades in 2002 and another (the 2001.1.03.0113 release tested here) just two weeks ago -- can be yours as quickly as you can download a 16.2MB setup file, though you'll need to register, supplying an e-mail address, to activate the spell checker.
The free version does lack a handful of features supplied by a $30 ($25 within 10 days of registration) PC Suite Plus pack -- notably a thesaurus, mail merge, hyphenation, and the ability to export or save files in RTF and XML formats. By default, the 602Text word processor and 602Tab spreadsheet use Word and Excel's respective DOC and XLS file formats, wooing business offices seeking a thrifty alternative to Microsoft's suite ($200 for 25 users or $400 for an unlimited site license including the Plus pack).
We were pleasantly surprised with 602Text's Word compatibility -- the program actually did a bit better than Corel WordPerfect 10 at loading a fancily formatted Word 2002 document with tables, footnotes, bulleted lists, text wrapped around images, and two- and three-column sections. (WordPerfect was thrown off by our inclusion of a footnote within a table; 602Text took it in stride, though it had to widen the document's margins to accommodate the three-column text.) By contrast, 602Tab does fine with Excel worksheet formulas and formats, but flops when loading spreadsheets containing charts or macros.
Indeed, if you don't mind a few un-Word-like aspects (Ctrl-Del and Ctrl-Bksp work to delete words, but you can't click in the margin or triple-click to select a line or paragraph), 602Text is capable enough to handle almost anyone's word processing needs. Inserting and formatting tables is a breeze, as is creating text frames for headlines or inserting images (though we stumbled briefly over 602Text's "object properties" setting and the need to change an image's "floating with character" status before we could drag it to different locations).
You can create different headers and footers for odd or even pages or just the first page of a document; use as many templates or styles as you want; or take advantage of a MagicText feature to decorate a page with artistically warped, filled, or shadowed headings akin to Word's WordArt. Some functions aren't intuitive to find (headers and footers, for instance, under Format Chapter), but customizing 602Text's toolbars and defaults is simple enough.
On the minus side, while the word processor automatically replaces straight with "curly" or typographic quotation marks, it doesn't do the same for apostrophes or convert hyphens to dashes -- the spelling checker is competent, but there's no automatic or on-the-fly correction or substitution feature.
