Customer Reviews

Corel Home Office [Old Version]

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was a little taken aback by the packaging of this product. It comes in a box like any other software package, but inside the box was a small instruction brochure, and another package which contained the program on a USB flash memory stick. No discs. At first, I didn't get it, and then I realized they mention netbooks a lot all over the (too large) package, and realized this was a marketing decision to get their product "in" with the netbook crowd; No need for an optical drive with the USB stick.

And it works as advertised. Plug in the USB stick, and you get the typical Windows "what do you want me to do?" prompt. Use Autorun and it installs Corel Home Office in no time at all. While I'd prefer a disc, I can live with this media, too.

Unfortunately, the "for netbooks" philosophy didn't stop there. One installed, running the program within Windows 7 on a regular 15" notebook computer was a disappointing experience. The program works well enough, and seems to handle MS Office files with no real problems; However, it has the annoying habit of opening in it's own non-Windows styled window, and anchoring itself to the upper left corner of the screen. This small window remains the same size, and will not allow resize, reshape, or any dimensional changes. Selecting "Full Screen" just makes everything in the window fill that window. It's as if they decided to completely disable the ability to run this well on anything with a screen resolution higher than 1024x768. I couldn't drag the window using standard Windows interface functions. It even lacks a proper window frame, and has no buttons for minimize, maximize, and close window in the upper right corner, like EVERY WINDOWS PROGRAM EVER.

What were they thinking?

I can't see using this on anything other than a netbook, unless you like your office documents to be anchored to the top left corner and want to get used to a completely new interface. It's a shame, too, because I like the actual program; It looks good and works well with documents. It's just a pain in the neck to use because of the lack of comprehensive view/layout controls for the windows themselves. Any self-respecting office suite should at least allow me to put the window in the middle of my screen so I'm not looking up in the corner of my large monitor.

I get that they're aiming for netbooks more than standard desktops/laptops, but why can't they do both? Why does the interface have to be so... Limited?

If you have a netbook, I imagine this is awesome, and I'm hanging on to my copy to put on the netbook I will inevitably be getting somewhere down the line... But as an MS Office replacement, this falls woefully short on anything bigger than a netbook. Call me confused, but I don't see the logic in ONLY supporting 1024x768 screen resolution, and I'm a bit miffed that the box says "optimized for netbooks & compact PCs" but fails to say anything about how "optimized" really means "only meant for" and mentions nothing about how you're completely unable to resize or move windows, even if you DO have more screen real estate to use than on a netbook.

Get it for your netbook and you'll probably love it. Do not bother trying to replace MS Office with this on a full-sized computer, though. It's not meant for that, and pretty much fails to be user-friendly.

I do wonder if all this is just an issue with Windows 7, which I'm running. If so, consider the rating to be one star higher. However, considering that Windows 7 is due to be the de facto OS on PCs two months from now, I don't think it's a good sign that this sort of thing could happen with a new product.

It seems Corel has gone back to the basics with their new Home Office Suite. Remember back when you got your first computer, which didn't have much ram or much space either? Word was easy to install, wasn't a resource hog and wasn't the be all and end all of word processors. Excel was a spreadsheet and didn't try to be anything else. it wasn't crammed full of advanced features that you never used and probably couldn't figure out how to if you had a dozen lifetimes.

Well Corel has recreated those days of yesteryear. Home Office doesn't take much space and it doesn't take much ram and it doesn't take hours and hours to learn how to use and it automatically configures itself to work on small netbook screens. So if you've been to [...], Staples or Office Supply and seen those small netbooks, but didn't think they could do the job, because of their slower processors, less ram and smaller hard drives, think again, because with Corel Home Office those netbooks might suit you just fine.

Be aware: Corel Home Office is NOT compatible with your Word Perfect files and will not read them. Although low in price, I feel I wasted $39.95 in getting it. Comes on a USB reader which you could re-use, I suppose. That would reduce your cost by 6 - $9. Not worth the purchase. Buy Corel Word Perfect for a real program.

First of all, even though this is a Corel product - this is NOT Wordperfect! It opens .wpd files, but documents can't be SAVED as .wpd files. They use a completely different default format (which can be changed with a single click) that the company probably doesn't expect anyone to use anyway. This is about OFFICE and OFFICE compatibility. It opens, saves and manipulates MS Office documents any way you want. It even offers a choice of Office 2003 or Office 2007 toolbars! And they look just like - yep - Office. The 'Calculate' program opens ( and saves as) Excel files, the 'Show' program opens (and saves as) Powerpoint files. At this price - this is a great Office compatibility suite. Very slick and professional.

If you're like me and are getting tired of the high price of MS Office and the fact that each new version gets slower and more and more bloated, then Corel Home Office is definitely worth checking out - it came on a USB flash drive, so it's easy to install on netbooks and installed in about 10mins or less (last time I installed Office 2007 it took almost an hour, which I thought was beyond ridiculous!). The interface for the 3 programs is nice and clean and uncluttered but still fairly intuitive, which again, each new version of MS Office seems to get more and more cluttered and less intuitive. It doesn't come with an email client much like Office Home & Student but does have a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software - basically everything a home user (or light business user) would need. (If you need a good email client, I recomment the Windows Live Mail which Microsoft offers as a free download off the internet). The startup times for each of the programs is nearly instantaneous and everything is very responsive and peppy compared to todays newer office programs - again, this is primarily so it can run on netbooks, but if you are an impatient person like me and get tired of software that is sluggish even on a newer dual-core 64bit processor with 3gb of memory, then Corel Home Office fits the bill really well. It has no problem opening MS Office spreadsheets, documents, and presentations but I have had a few instances where the formatting displayed slightly off - but for me, the performance gain more than outweighs any minor annoyances and so I will continue to use it exlusively - even though I do own MS Office and had used it previously.

I have the 901 eee PC Linux system, which I changed to the Windows XP system. With only 20GB of space, it's fairly limited with program capabilities. There is also no CD drive, and it really is merely a cool and fun internet access machine.

I never expected that I would be able to use anything but the XP WordPad for any type of document creating, receiving or editing. Then comes along Corel Home Office. And... wow!

First off, there is no disc, as the software comes on a reusable USB drive. Put the drive in your USB port, wait a couple minutes for your system to do it's thing, and you are soon entering the quick installation process.

There are three programs to choose from, with several options. Corel "Write" for word processing, "Calculate" for spreadsheets and "Show" for presentations. You can choose to install all or one, whatever you wish. I don't have any use for "Show", but installed it anyway to test. There are also optional templates and graphic enhancements for all programs. I installed every component and add-on, mainly just to see if I could. By the time it was installed, I instantly checked for online updates. When everything was done, the entire size of the program only takes about 180MB of space. You can edit and remove anything easily to free up space, but it's not a lot.

There is no lag, and does not slow down system resources. It's starts and closes quickly, and is very fast. If you have an eee PC or other netbook type system, you know how annoying some programs can be with slowness. There is none here. I have it networked with my printer and everything looks great when printed. Granted a netbook, with it's smaller keyboard etc. makes it a bit more cumbersome to create flyers or write a novel, but, you can now do it.

Of course there is also appeal to the standard laptop or desktop. Taking less space on any system is appealing. Plus the speed and ease of the programs are great. Compatibility with all office suites is a plus as you can open anything from Microsoft office like Excel, Word, even PowerPoint, PDF, XML, you name it. It's easy to navigate and work on several projects or pages at once with tabbed options, and the flexibility to add, move or hide options that you prefer. It all makes a less cluttered work space.

Corel Home Office has made my primarily novelty netbook a fully functional, productive, portable, and convenient professional appealing machine. And at the retail price, this is a no brainer investment. It was not long ago when the empty USB drive alone would cost more. And if you are in the eee PC cult, like me, get this yesterday!

As a user of Corel Paint Shop Pro and Corel Video Studio, I had downloaded the Free 30-day trial of Corel Home Office off of their Website and had been testing it to see if it met my needs. As a result, I was excited to be able to receive a more permanent copy through the Vine Program.

One of the key elements of Home Office is its COMPATIBILITY. It is designed to open all of the Microsoft documents, and if you are currently running on XP, it will relieve you to know that with this program you can also open the new Microsoft formats, including docX that all of your friends have sent you. Even better, the programs permit saving documents in "common" formats including PDF. If you transfer documents to your book reader, you will want to know that one of those formats is .RTF

The toolbars are easy to follow, since everything is similar to the microsoft program. And, the programs are "light" versions, meaning they don't take up a lot of memory if you are running on a netbook with limited memory.

A real plus to this program is its ability to move quickly between languages (and to work in a native format), so if this is an important issue to you, you should be aware that this function does an excellent job. It is set to automatically open in the language that you have set on your computer.

But you do give up a few things in this suite of office programs - small, but if you use the features, you should be aware of them.

First, when using the spreadsheet program, I am used to entering a list by typing, tabbing, and hitting return to go to the next line. Return always goes down one cell, not back to the beginning of the line. It makes it much harder to enter long lists of items.

Second, unlike the other programs, there are no templates included with the basic program. This is particularly noticeable to me in the presentation program, but is also problematic in setting up text in the Word version of the program.

Third, the presentation program does not support either audio or video. There are much more limited timings available for the presentation. This could be problematic if you are giving a presentation and count on the timings or count on recording your message to go along with the presentation.

I did attempt to contact tech support when checking about the movie/audio issue. Using online chat, it took 11 minutes for the tech rep to tell me he/she couldn't help me and to give me the phone number of the telephone support. I remained on the line for about 15 minutes on hold without reaching anyone. E-mail support states that it takes 24-48 hours to respond to questions.

All-in-all, if this product meets your needs, it's a nice little program, and as I mentioned earlier, that's a wonderful thing for netbooks with limited memory. However, before you decide to buy this program, I recommend that you use Corel's 30-day free trial (obtainable from their web site). For those needing a little bit more, Open Office supported by Sun Microsystems also has a free program available that is more intensive that this one.

Five stars because it works well! Three stars for what it's missing. A solid 4-star "light" office program.

If you plan to use Corel Home Office to work on your existing Microsoft (MS) Office 2007 (Word or Excel) documents, ya better check which features are used in the existing documents.

Corel Write messes up the logo image in my MS Word (2003) meeting minutes document and does not seem to handle outline numbering very well. There are likely other issues, but I've avoided using Corel Write with existing MS Word documents for the most part due to the compatibility problems on that first try.

Corel Calculate messes up number formats, cell shading colors, etc. in my MS Excel spreadsheets. The method for number entry is also different (e.g., must enter the year when entering dates in Corel Calculate, whereas MS Excel assumes the current year if none is specified).

Otherwise, Corel Home Office is a pretty good basic office suite and does run well on my Netbook (Vista, 2GB RAM).

The software is provided on a thumb drive, so you don't even have to hook up an optical drive to load it. The thumb drive is not useful for much else, however, due to its very small capacity (by current standards).

I'm a big fan of Corel products, and even am one of the few people still using WordPerfect regularly at work. As it is, this is probably best used as a netbook app and falls a bit short on a laptop or PC.

I installed Corel Home Office on my Windows Vista laptop a few months ago and have been using the software in conjunction with MS Office 2007 which came preloaded with my laptop. The license for Office is only a "trial" so I was looking for an alternative to buying the premium priced and bloated Office Suite.

For the price Corel Home Office offers great basic features that probably will accommodate most average users. With MS Office I used Word and Excel most often - the equivalent programs with the Corel suite are 'Write' and 'Calculate'. Corel also offers a PowerPoint equivalent with Corel 'Show'. In my experience the Corel products worked great individually. Even the layout of 'Write' is similar to Word 2007. It took very little adjustment to learn the Corel software "buttonology".

However, for users intending to use this software for viewing & editing MS Office files be warned that Corel has limited compatibility. In my experience whenever I opened MS Office Excel or Word files most if not all of the formatting was lost. It's a tremendous hassle to have to reset all the formatting in a document or spreadsheet.

Bottom line, this is decent software and best suited for someone not concerned with MS Office compatibility.