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Word Processing

Corel WordPerfect Office 12

Corel WordPerfect Office 12

List Price: $299.99
Your Price: $239.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Too little, too late for a once great product
Review: Earlier versions of WordPerfect have suffered from file incompatibility with MS Office applications. WordPerfect Office 12 *finally* has great file compatibility features. In fact, just click an icon on a toolbar and you can save to the MS Office application of your choice.

PROS
* Solid file compatibility with MS Office---finally!

* Paradox is an easy tool for learning about relational databases; it is far easier to use than Access, though not as powerful

* WordPerfect drawing tools are superior to MS Word drawing tools

* WordPerfect is still better for laying out complex documents, including outlines and multiple columns

* The 'reveal codes' feature alone is nearly invaluable--why didn't MS copy that somewhere along the way?

* It costs less

* Can create PDFs (without buying Acrobat) from the WP print menus

CONS
* Corel, WordPerfect's maker, is in financial trouble--will bug fixes and upgrades be available?

* Excel is more powerful (ie., Pivot tables) and has a better interface than Quattro Pro

* PowerPoint is head-and-shoulders easier to use than Presentations

THE SKINNY
Hey, WordPerfect, what took you so long to get the file compatibility!? Your market share is almost zip. Methinks it is too little, too late to resurrect this once great product. I was one of the last WordPerfect loyalists, and I switched to MS Office for good 4 years ago!

* If you are a WordPerfect loyalist, the file compatibility features alone make this a required purchase

* If you don't want to spend the money for MS Office, this is a good alternative

* BUT, OpenOffice.org is a *free* alternative to MS Office with good file compatibility. The interface isn't as nice as WordPerfect's--but *free* goes a long way

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Too little, too late for a once great product
Review: Earlier versions of WordPerfect have suffered from file incompatibility with MS Office applications. WordPerfect Office 12 *finally* has great file compatibility features. In fact, just click an icon on a toolbar and you can save to the MS Office application of your choice.

PROS
* Solid file compatibility with MS Office---finally!

* Paradox is an easy tool for learning about relational databases; it is far easier to use than Access, though not as powerful

* WordPerfect drawing tools are superior to MS Word drawing tools

* WordPerfect is still better for laying out complex documents, including outlines and multiple columns

* The 'reveal codes' feature alone is nearly invaluable--why didn't MS copy that somewhere along the way?

* It costs less

* Can create PDFs (without buying Acrobat) from the WP print menus

CONS
* Corel, WordPerfect's maker, is in financial trouble--will bug fixes and upgrades be available?

* Excel is more powerful (ie., Pivot tables) and has a better interface than Quattro Pro

* PowerPoint is head-and-shoulders easier to use than Presentations

THE SKINNY
Hey, WordPerfect, what took you so long to get the file compatibility!? Your market share is almost zip. Methinks it is too little, too late to resurrect this once great product. I was one of the last WordPerfect loyalists, and I switched to MS Office for good 4 years ago!

* If you are a WordPerfect loyalist, the file compatibility features alone make this a required purchase

* If you don't want to spend the money for MS Office, this is a good alternative

* BUT, OpenOffice.org is a *free* alternative to MS Office with good file compatibility. The interface isn't as nice as WordPerfect's--but *free* goes a long way

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Alternative to MS
Review: First off I don't own a business or anything I am just a poor student that needed an office program for school. After using Word and MS Office I needed to upgrade (this gets expensive year after year). So I decided to try Corel Office. It does pretty much everything Word, Excel, ect... does. And you can publish to PDF which is a bonus. Its a great alternative to MS and is a good value for the money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Alternative to MS
Review: First off I don't own a business or anything I am just a poor student that needed an office program for school. After using Word and MS Office I needed to upgrade (this gets expensive year after year). So I decided to try Corel Office. It does pretty much everything Word, Excel, ect... does. And you can publish to PDF which is a bonus. Its a great alternative to MS and is a good value for the money.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: WordPerfect 12: A New Hope?
Review: Having now had WordPerfect 12 installed for some time, I can say that Corel has done well in their target area of improving compatibility with MS Office. There really isn't much else new about this version, but improving WP's ability to co-exist with MS Office may be what is needed to keep this once-great suite going.
Why consider WP12 if you're looking for an alternative to MS Office? Put simply, StarOffice/OpenOffice just isn't ready yet. Every part of the WordPerfect suite is more polished, more powerful and more flexible than the equivalent component in SO/OOo. Of course WP12 has Reveal Codes, which neither SO/OOo nor MS Office has, but even in features that they have in common, like Publish-to-PDF, WP's version is more professional than the SO/OOo equivalent.
QuattroPro sometimes gets a bad rap, but it is a very powerful spreadsheet, with its own Pivot Tables (the equivalent of Excel's CrossTabs), and it offers 1 million rows and 18,000 columns, far more than ANY of its competitors.
Paradox is the sort of database app that makes its MS Office "equivalent" look like a child's toy, if you are prepared for the steeper learning curve.
Of course the heart of the suite is the incomparable WordPerfect itself, and version 12 is not an embarrassment to its predecessors. Even though the only major improvements have been to compatibility with MS Office (significantly better in WP, QP and Presentations), there have been some other useful bug fixes and refinements.

The really exciting thing about this release is the evidence that Corel (now owned by Vector, and in a much healthier financial situation than it has been for years) has renewed its commitment to the suite, and is being realistic about what is needed to protect WP's niche in the market. Planning for version 13 is apparently already under way, as is a trial of a version for Linux, so WordPerfect is definitely here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Having used both OpenOffice and StarOffice for over a year now, I can honestly say that, if you are looking for an enterprise-quality, professional business suite alternative to MS Office, WP12 is a much better choice. The quality difference is especially noticeable in the respective spreadsheet applications, with QuattroPro being several orders of magnitude more powerful and useful than Calc.
In summary, if, for any reason, you want an alternative to MS Office, WP12 is it. Sure, it's not free, but the competitive pricing structure for upgrades make it a very economical choice, and the quality of the product is such that the cost is money VERY well spent. WORDPERFECT LIVES!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WordPerfect Office 12
Review: I'm a die-hard WordPerfect user, so consider the source!

That said, one important note not present in Amazon's info: WPO 12 also works in Windows 98 SE ... try that with MSO later versions!

Several fixes have been observed (compared to WPO 11), including (and important to me) that using Wp's Publish to PDF again saves multiple colored text on the same line correctly again (it worked OK in Wp10).

Great product, particularly for those wanting improved round-tripping with MS Word files, opening or saving as.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Far superior to any other office package!
Review: So, the "whole world" used Microsoft Office. Why should you buy this if it is just the same thing? First, I am pretty sure this is a bit cheaper than microsoft. Second, you can save any Corel file into office format to be compatible with the world. Third, Corel customer support is much more friendly. Finally, The corel software package is far superior. Specifically . . .

Wordperfect: The word processor that is far superior to MS Word or any other that I have used. If you do nothing but type plain text, anything will work for you, even wordpad. However, as soon as you want to FORMAT with columns, tables, graphics, special characters, or anything fancy, WORDPERFECT is the best. You can type alt-F3 within the program to "reveal codes." This makes it so that you can see exactly what the program is doing. I "fluent" in literally dozens of different word processors and nothing gives you the power and control of wordperfect. I can get the job done with anything, but wordperfect saves me tons of time, and makes my life so much easier.

Quatro Pro: A spreadsheet program similar to microsoft excel. I do prefer this program over excel, but honestly I don't find it any better than excel. One advantage over excel is everybody else is using it.

Presentations: Similar to Mirosoft Powerpoint. This is another superior program. It can open powerpoint files. The huge advantage is the ease of use and the power to create great presentations in a little time. Often a program like this is something on your laptop, in which case, it doesn't matter if you have Powerpoint or not. If you create you presentations at home and present them on another computer, Presentations will save things in powerpoint format. You can download a free powerpoint viewer to make sure the conversion really worked. Every conversion I have ever done worked perfectly.

Conclusion, the corel suit is a better program. The program is faster, more efficient, more user friendly, makes smaller file sizes, and overall causes less stress. My advice: buy it!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not so suite when you think about it
Review: WordPerfect is a nice word processor. But there's nothing really the matter with MS Word either. They're only word processors after all, and both do what any word processor should do. So the question is, how does the rest of Corel's suite compare to Microsoft's offering? The answer is the same as its been for years: not too well. Excel, Access and Power Point are just plain better than Corel's Presentations, Paradox, etc. Do any businesses actually use Paradox or Presentations? I have not encountered any that do. The compatibility with MS has improved a little, but this begs the question why not buy MS Office in the first place? Then compatibility is no longer an issue, and you get applications that 90% of the business world is using anyway. So the key for me (I chose MS Office over WordPerfect) was not the word processor (WP and MS Word are both good) , but the other applications--the spreadsheets, presentation software, etc. Corel just isn't in the same league as MS when it comes to these.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best word processor for a bargain price
Review: WordPerfect is more intuitively user-friendly than MS Word, and really grows on you as you realize this. Example #1: the "Reveal Codes" View option, which you'll love if you ever have trouble figuring out a formatting complexity. Example #2: Menu items are laid out logically - such as page formatting, which is listed under the "Format" menu, not the "File" menu! Example #3: the User Agreement gives you more leeway on how you use the program. There are more examples, but the best advice I can give is to try it - it's a real bargain.


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