Microsoft Works 8.0

Rating:
Summary: Not worth it
Review: Don't even bother, unless you can get it free. Just download Open Office instead, http://www.openoffice.org/ and get all the functionality of a word processor, as well as a spreadsheet, presentation software (Power Point equivalent), and more, for free. I've used Works, Word (bundled with MS Office), and Open Office, and the only one that has any real benefits over the others is MS Office Professional and only if you need MS Access.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Option for Some
Review: If you are really cheap or totally bankrupt when it comes to buying a set of productivity tools, here's a savior or option. This is really low-end software and I really don't recommend it, but it is commendable enough to do simple task such as typing a one-page document, adding numbers in the spreadsheet program. But the database is just not good at all. It's unreliable and not powerful to handle complex task such as creating complex queries or even reports. Works 8.0 cost forty dollars but if you have an extra thirty dollars, buy Star Office 7.0 instead, if you were to compare that to Works, Star Office would look more like Microsoft Office. Not much has changed since version 7.0, but the Wizards are more tasks intensive and focus on accomplishing your work more efficiently. The Task Center is much leaner and sleeker, but comparing it to prior versions, its not much a of a improvement. One of the great features of Works I always appreciate, is the pre-made templates that come bundled, you can't go wrong there, and to be honest its bit more intuitive compared to Star Office.

Star Office is a full-featured productivity suite that includes a satisfactory word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics and drawing program. The only time I can recall when I really, really appreciated Works was version 4.5, which was the ultimate Works; the Wizards were intuitive and easy to use. It guided you along the way; this really made Works friendlier and useful than recent versions. So, as I said before if you have the extra 30 dollars go for Star Office you won't regret it or just save and buy WordPerfect Office, WordPerfect Productivity Pack or Microsoft Office Teacher & Student Edition, a $150 value and you get four of Microsoft's major productivity applications, Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, only problem with it, you can't upgrade to future versions of Office.


Rating:
Summary: Contains enhanced interface and a more substantive dictionar
Review: Microsoft Works provides a workable word processor The new calendar applet is much easier to use and will import your old addresses if you have the 7.0 version. Works can perform very easily most of the major tasks that Word provides such as footnoting, page numbering, typesetting of longer documents.
In contrast to the products offered by Sun Micro, the Works CD includes multitudes of useful clipart and there is a link in the Help menu to help you download multitudes more. The dictionary links to Encarta Encyclopedia. The one thing I didn't like so much was still the underdeveloped nature of the spreadsheet. It is more suited to home-related tasks and not to linear algegebraic functions. Still, it was nice to be able to edit excel 2003 documents and save them in a usable format for work.