SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.7 Upgrade

Rating:
Summary: Better than MS OFFICE
Review: I've used both MS Office (with Word, Excel, etc) and find that Lotus Smartsuite (Particularly WordPro) is much easier to use, while still offering just as many features that one could get from MS Word. WordPro can also easily open up "MSWord" files, as well as ASCII files automatically, without doing any importing, converting, or any other goofy stuff. When saving a file, you also have the option of saving it in any format you want. Lotus 123 is simple to use, and like Wordpro, it can also open up or save files in any format. This is especially useful if/when others send you MSWord files, or Excel files. All the Smartsuite programs run very clean. Oh yes, Organizer has to be the very best Organizer software on the market. It is supurb. Last, but far from least is the fact that, since it is not Microsoft software, the liklihood that you will have a virus or worm aimed at your software is greatly reduced. For the price, Smartsuite and all it's programs runs circles around MS Office.

Rating:
Summary: Lotus Smartsuite 9.7 - dated but still functions well
Review: Lotus Smartsuite is the Rodney Dangerfield of Software suites - it doesn't get much respect. I was worried that IBM would ruin Lotus when it bought them, and they haven't; but it would be great if they did a REAL upgrade to this product. It is the only real alternative to MS Office - andd better in many respects.In general, the components are much more elegant - WordPro is much better than MS Word. 123 is good but could use a facelift - Excel is more functional.

I bought this upgrade specifically to upgrade my older version of Lotus Approach. While little has changed in this software in the past five years, I still use Approach for most of my database functions - I have Access and Filemaker Pro on my computer as well, but Approach is WAY more intuitive than either of the others. I use a shareware program called Time and Chaos for my PIM so I didn't load Organizer, and Powerpoint is my presentation software of choice, so I also left out Freelance, as well. Come on Lotus - bring Smartsuite into the 21st Century!