Corel WordPerfect Office 12 On Its Own Merits Eric Grevstad
On Its Own Merits
But again, the speed bumps on the road to Corel Nation are relatively low, and WordPerfect Office 12 can capture your heart if you give it half a chance. Built-in PDF publishing is a huge convenience that Microsoft's proprietary-format-proud engineers refuse to provide. So is compatibility with Windows 98 and NT 4.0, while Microsoft Office 2003 insists on newer Windows XP or 2000 platforms. (Though that doesn't mean Corel's suite runs smoothly on antique hardware; it was sluggish on a Pentium III/550 desktop with a measly 128MB of memory.)
And the software provides easy access to everything from favorite document templates to powerful, normally-submerged-in-the-menus program features. Version 12 introduces an OfficeReady Browser that provides a visual view of, and slightly tacky plug for third-party, templates; it's handsome, but we like the default, well-annotated, file menu just as well.
The latter segues nicely into the PerfectExpert sidebar that organizes editing, formatting, and publishing options in friendly, need-anticipating fashion (and disappears with a click of the mouse if you'd rather free up screen space). Anticipating needs has been a WordPerfect hallmark since the debut some versions back of the real-time toolbar that offers both corrections for misspelled words and synonyms for correct ones; we admire it almost as much as the Real-Time Preview function that shows font, zoom, or other layout changes not only in a preview box but on the main document display as you hover the mouse over a menu choice (without actually changing your text until you click). For fine-tuning your formatting, the word processor's famous Reveal Codes option eliminates guesswork about whether an invisible format tag is at the end of one paragraph or start of the next.
While WordPerfect remains by far the star of the suite, Quattro Pro offers ample, industrial- strength spreadsheet features including 3D charts and CrossTab Reports akin to Excel Pivot Tables; Presentations makes crafting slide shows simple, with plenty of transition effects and executable and Web-page export options. You also get knickknacks and extras ranging from Corel's usual bushel of fonts and clip art to SMS mobile-phone e-mail and messaging utilities, though the provided Pocket Oxford Dictionary has too high a ratio of blank (or rather, "No definition in this edition — visit Corel's online store to buy the full version") to real entries.
Word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations are pretty well developed as mature PC applications, and WordPerfect Office 12 isn't a landmark advance that'll send Microsoft back to the drawing board. Nor, for that matter, will it replace OpenOffice.org as the clear choice for bargain hunters or users eyeing Linux (Corel recently reintroduced its WordPerfect for Linux, but it's years older than release 12 for Windows).
But it's the best, smoothest alternative yet to paying Microsoft's office-suite mortgage (in Product Activation and business licensing rigmarole as well as retail price, though Corel does nag you to register for e-mail support). If you're among the millions using an older version of Microsoft Office and don't need the enterprise-oriented, back-end server integration that anchors Office 2003, you should take a good look at the Canadian contender before mailing your next upgrade check to Redmond.
