Home Office 2000

Rating:
Summary: Inexpensive Office Suite for the Average User
Review: Home Office 2000 is for the typical computer user, whether for personal or professional use. While it may not have the highly advanced features of the more expensive office suites, most users - even power users - don't even know how to use those features.

Home Office 2000 has a fairly robust, integrated office package that is compatible with all of the major office suites. The 2000 version is a bit dated, however, using somewhat older compatible file formats (MS Word 6, for example). This means that there will be few issues when porting files from Home Office 2000 to another suite. There may be some difficulty, however, opening files generated by newer professional applications depending on the complexity of the file.

The office suite - word processor, spreadsheet, and database - allows information to be ported from one Home Office application to another (e.g. embed spreadsheets into your documents). The integration is fairly seamless, with glitches occurring only a little more than they would occur with the highly priced competitive products.

Aside from the standard office package it also bundles additional proxy server, web hosting, fax/phone, and other useful software together. It's highly doubtful that the target market would use the rest of the software bundled in this package. Still, it's all useful software, if a bit dated.

Installation was fairly painless on most Microsoft operating systems, assuming you use the default settings. If you don't use the default setting, it may create some difficulties - especially when installing on WinNT.

The package is not resource intensive. It can run on older machines (Pentium 75 recommended), and doesn't take much space on the hard drive (perhaps 100-150 MB for the office software).

This is an excellent general office suite that delivers a good capability for an extremely low price. This is a very useful package that's well worth the cost.

Rating:
Summary: The eater of work
Review: I bought this product a little over a year ago at an office supply chain. As far as the program itself, I was quite happy. Until tonight. Suddenly, a window popped up when I tried to access the word processor, telling me that in order to continue using the product I would have to buy a *full version*. Nowhere in the packaging or literature is it indicated that this is a trial version program (although the price here on Amazon[.com] is certainly a clue). Now I have a worthless program that I can't access with over a year's work on it. Save yourself some headache down the road, buy a *real* office suite bundle.