Rating: 
Summary: something missing
Review: Did anyone notice that Office 2000 Professional used to include FrontPage, Publisher and PhotoDraw but the Office XP Professional Upgrade only includes the basic applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access)? I have a problem with that. I like MS products in general, but I expect their product lines to be consistent. The Prefessional Upgrade should upgrade all the applications. If the other applications were discontinued, that would be one thing, but the "Special Edition" includes the full suite. Is there a "Special Edition" upgrade to fully upgrade the original Professional Suite?
Rating: 
Summary: Reliability improved
Review: I have been using Microsoft Office XP Professional Plus Version Beta for a short while of time now and I am finding it a great application yet to date. I have been using the application extensively, for work and home and I have noticed that reliability has been slightly improved and this is of great achievement. For any of Microsoft Office program to stop responding, a great improvement is of Auto-Recover that would recover the document before the work goes into a land of black holes. It is of a great tool and this would save me from swearing at the computer, in fact it has already saved my work that would usually take me another two hours to reproduce. On another note, features such as "Smart Tags" and "Task Panes" are also of a welcome intake as changes can now be done very easily like font-changes and inserting images. Microsoft Office XP programs now offer (finally) multiple highlighting so to save time and effort. Mail merge is now easier and the clipboard now holds more. Individuals will now be pleased that the paper clip will now be eradicated with the much delight from myself and other individuals and to curtail the times of swearing at it. However, individuals can still turn it on if you still miss it or use it. Overall, Microsoft Office XP is a welcome piece of software and with voice-recognition (for the times when typing too much is a strain or you can not be bothered) then it is here to stay, until the next version of Microsoft Office. However, there are a few setbacks on the improvements of Microsoft Outlook Express and of Smart Tags in some programs not as comprehensive as in Microsoft Word but these should not be a problem really in the long term. Microsoft Office XP Professional Plus Version contains every Microsoft Office application that I use from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft Publisher; these programs will get you on top of your work. For more information of Microsoft Office XP, there is a demonstration of it's features... Flash is required even though a non-flash version is available.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the Update?!?
Review: ...Well, as you've seen above (or maybe now below) this is basically what used to be known as MS Office Premium...from what I've experienced and seen it has been remade very well I can only recommend it to anyone who will actually need all of the features. For those of you that don't, compare the price of the standard or professional update's with which ever additional programs that you might need. Now my gripes:1. Where is the update version of this product?! For those of us that have already spent the money for Office Premium 2000...I think that we deserve it, Mr. Gates! 2. The mandatory registration; Bill, I don't like the idea that there is no way of knowing what information is REALLY being sent to Microsoft...to the users: Register by phone, that's my recomendation to you...
Rating: 
Summary: Powerpoint
Review: With Powerpoint XP you can now have multiple design templates within the same presentation and the new default slide view makes it easier than ever to make great custom presentations. For those who, like I do, depend on Powerpoint for their presentations, these aspects alone are worth the price of the new Office XP. A small downside I found in this version is that when you go to blank white screen the pen doesn't work. This is unfortunate since I would use a blank screen and pen (in Office 2000 Powerpoint) to draw illustrations.
Rating:
Summary: Get Ready For The Future ...
Review: ... of software, productivity, and more! This software collection contains the following: Microsoft Word 2002 Microsoft Excel 2002 Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 Microsoft Outlook 2002 Microsoft Access 2002 Microsoft Publisher 2002 Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer As a user of Microsoft Office (almost all versions), I have to say, this is the best deal in Microsoft history. It includes a mouse and more...It is great for people who are new to the world of Microsoft Office or people who are pros. This goes especially good with Microsoft's MSN Services such as Hotmail and MSN. Furthermore, it goes great with Windows XP [still in beta] (Viva la difference!). Also, this has some hefty system requirements, so I recommend getting a new computer. Yet, this is great deal otherwise. I highly recommend this. ATTENTION HOME USERS, Microsoft is most likely going to can Microsoft Works. I highly recommend getting Microsoft Office Personal Portfolio 2002. It contains plenty of templates for the home and home office user. It makes this bargain a bargain for a full suite of Microsoft products!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent beginner or intermediate user tool
Review: I have been playing with a beta version of Office XP and have found it a very good product for beginning and intermediate users. XP has put a lot of information in front of the user that was difficult to find in the past. Also the integrated Speech recognition is a nice feature that is surprisingly accurate. If you are not a power user that spends the majority of your life in a software application or you just want to pop into an application and get something done Office XP is a most excellent product.
Rating: 
Summary: ITS NOT WORTH IT!!
Review: I being trying the beta version for quite sometime, and i say if ur happy with OFFICE 2000 Premier (which officeXP professional SE is), stick with it. This version i think is slower because it uses too much graphics as if a business apps should be a game. I say NO! But the good side is that they finally put htm capability on the second cd which is PUBLISHER 2002 (lets u save to html, which is actually good because u can share it as a webpage). So just upgrade your current publisher to publisher 2002!! Because aside from the annoying "softer" graphics (similar to winME), I say it basically a waste of your 500 dollars.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent Office Suite Building on The Microsoft Tradition
Review: Office XP is a great upgrade to Office 2000, I have a preview of it now. I am not impressed with the speech recognition but I like typing better anyway. Other speech recognition pacakages are better. Overall it is excelent and worth the upgrade.
Rating:
Summary: Office XP is worth the upgrade, for some people.
Review: I have been using the new Office XP corporate preview beta for about 3 weeks now, and I love it. The funcionality of the programs is greatly improved. Many of the quirks that 2000 had have been removed. That annoying little paperclip doesn't appear unless you want him to. The Outlook 2002 is great. It now allows you to check and manage your Hotmail accounts in Outlook. The best feature about the new Office version is it's web publishing strength. If you use Office for web based business this is the way to go. If it is just for home use, stick with '97, 2000, or even Works. The only complaints that I have had is Microsoft's support of the preview version. Although you were supposed to be able to use it until 8/31/01 they have removed all of their support websites, and you can't activate any new installations any longer.
Rating: 
Summary: Office
Review: Well, actually I like Excel and hate Word. The other programs included I have little or no use for.
I use Excel all the time for engineering calculations, including writing VBA macros to automate things that I can't do easily in the cells. It's very useful, like having a calculator that remembers everything you've done, writes it down, but allows you to change inputs and recalculate everything automatically. Unfortunately, there is a bug in the help files, so I can't get Visual Basic help anymore. The IT guys at work fixed the regular help but never could get the macro help to work again. Very annoying.
Word is terrible compared to WordPerfect. What I used to be able to do with a couple of keystrokes, now takes minutes of navigation thru menus and dialog boxes. Outline formatting, numbered lists, etc. are especially frustrating in Word because nothing is obvious. You shouldn't have to get a college degree in word processing in order to learn to write a specification and get the formatting correct. One annoyance is that paragraph formatting is hidden in a selectable little space at the end of the paragraph, so if you try to delete the last few words by hitting shift-end and delete, you will delete numbering, formatting, etc. of that paragraph. Also, the thesaurus that came with WordPerfect was much better.
In general, Microsoft Office tries to be everything for every possible user, automates many tasks to do things that it thinks I want to do even though I don't, and makes it hard to figure out how to undo them.
I am using WordPerfect wherever possible and trying StarOffice.
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