WordPerfect Office 2002 Professional Edition

The send to mail would be nice if it would work nicely with Outlook or Outlook Express. The Perfect Expert (WP8) and descendants are actually USEFUL unlike that [] paperclip of MS. The templates and the question/answer of Perfect Expert actually help make a hard or unusual or uncommon report, form, etc. easy to make and to do it correctly.
As for the rest of the Suite:
Presentations: Is almost comparable to PowerPoint

Quattro Pro: is NOT as good as Excel, so if you need a spreadsheet as your main application then I highly recommend MS Office. If your needs are Word processing or SIMPLE spreadsheet functions then and only then is Quattro for you. And even then Excel is better.

CorelCENTRAL: well . . . the previous versions where a flop, with good reasons, I am still evaluating the one in 2002 suite. Personally I think a true Outlook replacement would be much better, this would include the ability to just click on a button to send a document in WP to whomever you wanted. I am not sure if this is possible (read EASY) in the present suite. I do know you can, just not how easy it is, and therefore if I can teach my secretary (and other employee's) to use it.

As for the relational database, hmmmm well, its easier to use than Access but not as powerful, on the other hand if something is powerful but not easy to use, its useless. MS AND Corel need to work on their respective relational databases. In this respect I would say that for me MS is better but then again I find that even now, 8 years after the venerable 6.1b WP suite and office 95, I STILL need both MS office AND Corel WP suites to be functional in my office.

Fact is that for my varied uses, I have to say I need WordPerfect, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, (though I kinda lean toward Presentations now), and Outlook.

If you can find WP for about 2/3rds of the price and you're a small business, then WP is better for you. If you absolutely need the compatibility with MS than OpenOffice is better for you.
IF you're an editor, publisher, author, student then WP is better for you, BUT you will have to have as a standby either OpenOffice or MS Office.

If you're a big business, then you have no choice but to get MS Office.

If you're an accountant, or deal with complicated spreadsheets, than Excel, and therefor MS office is a must.

If your in marketing . . . hmmm, Presentations could be good enough, at least in 2000 version. I am still evaluating the 2002 version. I would lean toward PowerPoint and Word, only because it will be compatible with everybody else in the company, and if there is a marketing dept. then you're a big business.

If you're an engineer: Use WP, and give the pointy haired bosses and marketing air heads some headaches. I mean hell, they do it to you, you might as well have fun with them. AND you will love the reveal codes function.

I find the other add-ons of the suites to be useful. Usually I find that I prefer the Corel version over the MS version. Like the PhotoEditor, I prefer Photo house (as a simple picture editor). But that is partly just what you are accustomed to using. Photo house is better than photoeditor but not enough to brag about.

I hope this helps you make an informed decision. Most of this advice is from experience.

A 430 page User Guide book is included, with an appendix after each section, it is very detailed without being complicated, and the explanations are clear.

WordPerfect allows the cursor can be placed in any position on the page, so text may start at any point in a document without having to use the Enter and Tab keys.

Tables are simple to use and the contents are easily editable, you can add columns of figures, and deal with them as you would in a spreadsheet program. You can open a table formatting bar in WordPerfect 10 to aid in this so you don't have to open a new program just to do some sort of calculation. Use the right-click options, they allow a lot of shortcuts to useful points.

Viewing text in different fonts is achieved using the drop-down text box, where it can be viewed in the highlighted font. A really useful idea, and one not utilised in enough programs.

The help file is extremely useful and sits at one side of the interface. The whole thing has the feel of a Web editing program, and, as such, is very simple to follow and is very intuitive.

Columns are easily inserted at any point using a drop down menu to insert as many as you want.

This is an easy to learn word-processing program that can output to HTML or PDF, and can be saved in a large number of different formats.
 
Quattro Pro 10 is the spreadsheet section of this suite. I am not the sort of person who regularly uses programs that deal with numbers, but most of what I require here is very intuitive and straightforward.

This program uses the idea of notebooks to separate the different sheets, and they can even be secured by passwords for privacy. An automatic backup facility can be set to save at intervals convenient to the user.

The pre-set calculations are very extensive and would probably be more than sufficient for the average user of this type of program. Cells can be moved by dragging and dropping between notebooks, or even copied and pasted, as well as having the format changed without affecting the actual figures in each cell.

Cell colour, widths, heights etc are all easily editable from menus. Many different file formats can be opened with Quattro Pro 10, including Microsoft Excel, or Lotus 1-2-3, or even Quicken .qif files.

Links to notebooks can be used to update information quickly, from within other notebooks or even WordPerfect tables.

Spreadsheets can also be viewed as graphic charts and tied to database programs such as Paradox 10 (also included), which is mainly used to deal with reports. Paradox 10 can also be used to convert tables and reports to HTML documents which can be dynamic and work with any browser, by retrieving data from your server automatically.

Corel Presentations 10 is a slide/presentation show program with many important features. It can present your show using embedded fonts, and importing and exporting Power Point files has been enhanced, as well as pdf support.

Working with text, titles and even subtitles as well is possible. Several drawing tools are supplied, and bitmapped images are also able to be edited, and sound files, either .wav or midi, may be inserted into the presentation, and even video too.

Corel Presentation 10 can be used to publish to the web in HTML format and .pdf as well as other programs such as WordPerfect, or even emailed.

CorelCENTRAL 10 is a collection of PIM features rolled into one. This consists of a calendar, card file, memo, and an alarm feature. An email client and a groupware program allows you to access and add tasks to other address books.

Corel Application Recovery Manager opens automatically if there is a program failure and a wizard walks you through choices about what to do. Paradox 10 already has a built in feature for this. A Location Manager, which is a component of Corel A.R.M. will open your WordPerfect Office applications even if they have been moved or damaged.

Corel Connector is a web client so you can connect to the internet straight from the program and find information or browse Corel web sites or post questions to Corel newsgroups.

Pocket Oxford Dictionary with 30,000 words has been integrated into WordPerfect Office.

Corel WordPerfect Office 2002 Pro, also includes the software and speaker headphone for Dragon Naturally Speaking5. If you are not a touch typist, and have the time to get the program to recognise your speech patterns, you can do everything without having to touch the keyboard. Not only do you get straight text from speech, but formatting is available through voice commands too.

Included are more than 1000 fonts, 12,000 clipart images and symbols, and also over 200 photos.

Bottom Line.

Don't just look at this program because it is possibly cheaper than the opposition, but because it achieves so much. It is a worthy adversary for Microsoft's Word program, and now it is being bundled and sold with new computers, I am sure that WordPerfect 2002 has the ability to compete very favourably with any other word processors, it certainly comes with enough features.

This is a really useful set of programs rolled into one, with plenty of help available. You should be able to use this program for anything you need to do in an office situation. Corel have gone all-out to make this a great program, and it is worth investigating.