Microsoft Word 2003

Rating:
Summary: Just keeps getting better!
Review: I was lucky enough to get Office 2003 before the official release date. Microsoft has done a nice job on the interface. Everything looks cleaner, and it will pop up useful sidebars on the righthand side (such as the clipbook for pasting items you have copied, help items, etc).

Another thing about the interface is that it meshes nicely with Windows XP themes. It will take a soft blue color when paired with Windows XP's default theme. All of the bars will be blue. This is nice on the eyes. The same goes with silver - everthing will match.

As for upgrading to 2003 from older versions... this is a tough call. If you have Word XP, I would be hard pressed to tell you to upgrade. Even Word 2000 does a fine job. I don't know if there are enough new bells and whistles in this to warrant upgrading. If you like to have the newest of everything however, this is the best word processor out there for PCs.

For those of you on a tight budget, thers is hope. As good as Microsoft Office products are, there is a FREE alternative. You may want to give OpenOffice 1.1 a download. It is completely free and open source, and most importantly, compatible with Microsoft documents (word, excel, etc).

Rating:
Summary: Just keeps getting better!
Review: I was lucky enough to get Office 2003 before the official release date. Microsoft has done a nice job on the interface. Everything looks cleaner, and it will pop up useful sidebars on the righthand side (such as the clipbook for pasting items you have copied, help items, etc).

Another thing about the interface is that it meshes nicely with Windows XP themes. It will take a soft blue color when paired with Windows XP's default theme. All of the bars will be blue. This is nice on the eyes. The same goes with silver - everthing will match.

As for upgrading to 2003 from older versions... this is a tough call. If you have Word XP, I would be hard pressed to tell you to upgrade. Even Word 2000 does a fine job. I don't know if there are enough new bells and whistles in this to warrant upgrading. If you like to have the newest of everything however, this is the best word processor out there for PCs.

For those of you on a tight budget, thers is hope. As good as Microsoft Office products are, there is a FREE alternative. You may want to give OpenOffice 1.1 a download. It is completely free and open source, and most importantly, compatible with Microsoft documents (word, excel, etc).

Rating:
Summary: The famously broken bits are still broken.
Review: Pointing out Word's faults is like pointing out the pyramids are crumbling--it may be true, but they're still going to be there. Still, Word's Master Document "feature" is still the surest way to document corruption. And you'd better track down the internet page that gives detailed instructions on the convoluted way you need to set up heading numbering if you want to keep your Word documents from corrupting.

And so on. I doubt anyone cares. Word is a fact of life, no matter if it's constantly falling to bits. The new version's XML support does give you a new path to recovering a corrupted document: saving to XML and then converting that file back to Word format has saved me some time on a couple of occasions.

We use Word because we have to. On those occasions when I don't have to, I use WordPerfect, because I like to actually produce things, not spend my time dealing with software problems.

Rating:
Summary: The famously broken bits are still broken.
Review: Pointing out Word's faults is like pointing out the pyramids are crumbling--it may be true, but they're still going to be there. Still, Word's Master Document "feature" is still the surest way to document corruption. And you'd better track down the internet page that gives detailed instructions on the convoluted way you need to set up heading numbering if you want to keep your Word documents from corrupting.

And so on. I doubt anyone cares. Word is a fact of life, no matter if it's constantly falling to bits. The new version's XML support does give you a new path to recovering a corrupted document: saving to XML and then converting that file back to Word format has saved me some time on a couple of occasions.

We use Word because we have to. On those occasions when I don't have to, I use WordPerfect, because I like to actually produce things, not spend my time dealing with software problems.

Rating:
Summary: Keeps On Getting better
Review: Word 2003 includes development tools that add dynamic features to documents making them powerful than ever. The power beneath all this is XML, allowing the user to embed components for updating data in documents such as stock quotes. Word 2003 offers simple, familiar yet improved features regular users are accustomed to. Majority of the features in Word 2003 are aimed primarily toward businesses and the Enterprise. But are still necessary for the average user because of the control over information across all the Office applications. Tools such as Information Rights Management (IRM), (this controls the flow of information to specific users), persons can be restricted on how they use your Office files; whether it's printing or sharing, very powerful! Reading view is an enhanced mode of print preview; documents are laid out in virtual pages reducing the need to print. The Task Pane is also improved by offering resources to look up information on a particular topic being typed; this is a feature across the core Office applications. Lots of other great features make Word 2003 a worthy upgrade.

Rating:
Summary: Justified Upgrade for some, but not all
Review: Word 2003 is more powerful than ever. Unfortunately, most of the new features are aimed primarily towards large business. As a result, many end-users simply won't need them (or be able to use them). The users who will benefit most from upgrading are corporate users or users purchasing bundles with new PCs.

Pros:

Instant Messaging support is now integrated with Office applications. However, only MSN messenger is used. Users who predominantly use Yahoo, trillian, jabber, or ICQ will not find any utility in this feature, without signing up for a messenger account.

The user interface has changed for the better, and matches the Windows XP interface better. Personally, I like it. Also, fonts are rendered better, and consequently documents will look better on laptops (no more jagged edges).

The Reading Layout feature splits the text into a two column format for easier reading (think newspaper).

If you have Microsoft Server and SharePoint services installed on your network, you can share and track changes to word documents. Nice feature, but requires a significant investment on server software.

When typing an hypertext link, word no longer reformats the font of the URL.

Cons:

Product activation, which requires network access.

All of the Office applications now have a blended help system that first checks help files online first, before getting local help files.

XML is useless for end users. Programmers who use Word to write XML will find that Word no longer tries to autocorrect much of the XML, but you will still have the annoying red underline on many of your XML tags because the spellchecker flags them as misspelled.

Still, I think it makes a worthy upgrade for 97/2000 users, but XP users will find the expense difficult to justify. More specifically, if you are an end user without a lot of Microsoft back end software installed on your network (Windows 2000/2003 Server, SharePoint services, etc.) I would think very carefully before upgrading.

Rating:
Summary: Justified Upgrade for some, but not all
Review: Word 2003 is more powerful than ever. Unfortunately, most of the new features are aimed primarily towards large business. As a result, many end-users simply won't need them (or be able to use them). The users who will benefit most from upgrading are corporate users or users purchasing bundles with new PCs.

Pros:

Instant Messaging support is now integrated with Office applications. However, only MSN messenger is used. Users who predominantly use Yahoo, trillian, jabber, or ICQ will not find any utility in this feature, without signing up for a messenger account.

The user interface has changed for the better, and matches the Windows XP interface better. Personally, I like it. Also, fonts are rendered better, and consequently documents will look better on laptops (no more jagged edges).

The Reading Layout feature splits the text into a two column format for easier reading (think newspaper).

If you have Microsoft Server and SharePoint services installed on your network, you can share and track changes to word documents. Nice feature, but requires a significant investment on server software.

When typing an hypertext link, word no longer reformats the font of the URL.

Cons:

Product activation, which requires network access.

All of the Office applications now have a blended help system that first checks help files online first, before getting local help files.

XML is useless for end users. Programmers who use Word to write XML will find that Word no longer tries to autocorrect much of the XML, but you will still have the annoying red underline on many of your XML tags because the spellchecker flags them as misspelled.

Still, I think it makes a worthy upgrade for 97/2000 users, but XP users will find the expense difficult to justify. More specifically, if you are an end user without a lot of Microsoft back end software installed on your network (Windows 2000/2003 Server, SharePoint services, etc.) I would think very carefully before upgrading.

Rating:
Summary: Still the best word processor for Windows.
Review: Word is one of those products which has become a victim of its own success, and automatic features that are more annoying than the conveniences they were intended to be. Another issue is the almost non-existent backwards compatibility with previous versions, meaning that only the simplest layouts are likely to successfully transfer across versions. And it doesn't seem to matter whether you save as a rich text file (.rtf) or a previous version of Word.

To get around these problems, I switch all the auto-format features off, and ship anything that needs to be accurately conveyed as a .PDF (Adobe Acrobat), which Word is highly integrated with. Macros work okay, but are best written up in the macro editor. Text for use outside of Word is best saved as a plain Text file, and any formatting done within the destination application. Framemaker, for example.

Word is a good word processor and is not a DTP application to any useful extent. And used in its word processor mode, it does compare more than favourably with any alternative that I have tried. And that's quite a few. The font options and quality of rendition is particularly good. It's also a good idea to visit and subscribe to word tips, who have a huge amount of advice about Word in general and macros in particular.

All in all, there's not too much to complain about if the aforementioned is observed. Users requiring a more sophisticated product should consider Adobe's Framemaker.