Corel WordPerfect Office 12

Microsoft Office dominates the productivity-suite market and has become the de facto standard in the corporate realm. Yet it has been unable to wipe out Corel's WordPerfect Office suite, a powerful, less-expensive alternative that has managed to prosper--albeit with a tiny fraction of Microsoft's market share. WordPerfect Office 12.0 retains the package's core strengths--the venerable WordPerfect word processor, the Quattro Pro spreadsheet app, and the Presentations app--while adding several interface enhancements, including the ability to mimic the interface and keyboard shortcuts of Microsoft Office's main apps, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

All isn't perfect, however. WordPerfect Office 12.0 is still dreadful at importing Microsoft Office documents, particularly Excel and PowerPoint files. In our tests, Excel charts were dramatically altered, and PowerPoint presentations' text and graphics were routinely scrambled during the import process. We're not saying that WordPerfect Office 12.0 is a poor product--far from it. In many ways, it's easier to use than Microsoft Office, particularly for users who frequently upload PDF, HTML, and XML documents to the Web. But we strongly advise corporations and educators debating a cost-saving switch to WordPerfect Office 12.0 to test the program's importing skills before making the leap.

	Education Edition	Standard Edition	Professional Edition
Includes	WordPerfect Quattro Pro Presentations Paradox Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 6.3	WordPerfect Quattro Pro Presentations	WordPerfect Quattro Pro Presentations Paradox Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications 6.3
Full price	$99.99	$299.99	$349.99
Upgrade price	N/A	$149.99	$199.99
# of licenses	3	1	Contact Corel for more information.

Installation  |  Interface

Installation
Corel WordPerfect Office 12.0 comes on two CDs and is simple to install. The first CD includes the core apps: WordPerfect 12.0, Quattro Pro 12.0, Presentations 12.0, and Zim's SMS.com, a utility for transmitting e-mail and instant messages to and from mobile devices. You'll quickly notice the absence of a standard e-mail application. The Professional and Education editions also include Corel's Paradox database app, which installs separately. The second CD includes a variety of third-party utilities, including Acrobat Reader and Internet Explorer, and Corel's OfficeReady Browser, a handy template viewer (see Features).

In our tests, setup was fast and painless, taking about 10 minutes. A full install of the three core programs--WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, and Presentations--required just 373MB of disk space. More good news: users upgrading from WordPerfect Office 11.0 and earlier editions can install version 12.0 without first uninstalling their old copies, which wasn't the case with previous upgrades.