We just got a new PC, operating on Windows ME (probably soon upgrading to XP.) I find Microsoft Word unwieldy to say the least, and would like to get WordPerfect instead, since I have used it a work for years, and can do pretty much whatever I want with it.
Now, looking at the expense side of getting the software for my home PC: I can get the WordPerfect Family pack for about $50. The Office Edition upgrade is about $189, and a brand new version of the Office Edition is about $330.
What am I missing out on if I get the Family Pack? I don’t have very complex needs, but I do consider the following to be very important, if not essential:
[ul]
[li]The ability to print address labels for a list of people;[/li][li]Watermarks; and[/li][li]The same ease of inserting and moving graphics that I have had in the version of WordPerfect I use at work (WordPerfect 7.0, 1997 edition, I think.)[/li][/ul]
Do any of you have any experience with the Family Pack, to know whether or not it contains these features, or have any other comments on it? Thanks for your help.
The Word Perfect website has links to “feature tours” of each of the different versions. Maybe that will help sort out some of the differences. I don’t see anything that calls itself the “Family Pack,” though, so maybe not.
Thanks, KneadToKnow. I had checked out that site, but it still left me with some unanswered questions. On the site, they list the (secondary) target market as purchasers “who do not want to pay for a full office suite, but require basic productivity tools.” That left me wondering whether I’d be getting a stripped-down version of WordPerfect 9, or if it is just advertising-ese to suggest that anything other than the brand-spanking new version is just not a full office suite.
If it is just plain WordPerfect 9, that would be upgrading me 2 versions above the older version I know and love. (Ahh! Reveal Codes!) I just didn’t know whether they left out everything above the most basic install on there, in order to add on all the “fun family features” that I don’t really care anything about.
Also, if I do purchase this, would I then be eligible for the Standard Edition upgrade at some time in the future? (If so, if I bought it and didn’t find it adequate, $50 + $189 still beats $330.)
You can probably score a copy of Corel Office 8 cheaply by calling some of the 800 numbers of little vendors listed in the back of various PC magazines. Or eBay, for that matter.
Are you also a Quattro Pro user, just out of curiosity?
Great idea, AHunter3. I might just try that, if I don’t find a clear answer re: WP Family Pack. (I’m slightly leery of that, since one of the reasons that we got a new computer was that when I tried to install an outdated, but brand new, copy of Excel 97 (purchased cheaply from what I thought was a legitimate source) last year, it ended up screwing up our computer’s registry irretrievably. Clean Sweep et al wouldn’t help; the only choice was to limp along with half our applications, or reformat the hard drive. After moving all our data to the new one, we retired the old one to be the kid’s game computer.)
I like Quattro Pro very much. I used do most of my spreadsheet development in it a few years ago, but when my cheapskate office opted to switch to the Microsoft Office suite a few years ago (since that was what came free with all the new computers we bought, and it was cheaper to stay legal with Microsoft than to buy new Corel Suites for each computer.) I switched to Excel then. Although it does have a few quirks, I like it, and since I’ve done most of my development with it in the past few years, I’m fresher with it than Quattro. Otherwise, I feel that Quattro and Excel are about equal. (No comparison between WordPerfect and Word, however. I’ve warned our IT guy that there will be bloodshed if he attempts to remove WordPerfect from my computer.)
I have used both WordPerfect and Word and find Word better. I guess it’s just a matter of taste, but I really think you’ll like Word once you get used to it. I used WordPerfect at work for years, but have Word now both at the office and at home. There are many features in Word that I find easier, such as footnotes and fonts (italics, bold, etc.). Word also has AutoCorrect and other features WordPefect doesn’t.
I’ll pipe up too! [sub]I’ll always pipe up! [/sub]
I’ve used WP and Word and other earlier (Word-11 for the Dec?) software programs and always found that once you got used to them, they’re all pretty much the same.
At my current office, we had WP first by a vote of all the secretaries. Not being a secretary or someone that works constantly with programs such as Word and WP we went along. However, last year we musta got a deal from MS because low (lo?) and behold we have Word and Excel and Powerpoint and Access…duh Wow! We still have WP but were warned it may disappear, so we’ve quietly been converting to Word, which actually isn’t too hard.
As I said, once you get used to it they’re all pretty much the same.
BTW k2dave I have Word 2000, and I didn’t find the WP help, however I have seen it before (maybe Word 97?)
Philo, we’ve had the same thing at our workplace. Switched over to Word and WP is going to be eliminated completely very soon. However, the WP at work is DOS based and not Windows.
AFAIK, Word does not have a feature that makes it act as WP. In fact, we had great difficulty at work when all our docs were in WP and if we had to copy some of them over to Word, we had to often go in and change the format, deleting certain commands that caused them to be incompatible, such as indentation, paragraphing, etc.
“There are many features in Word that I find easier, such as footnotes and fonts (italics, bold, etc.). Word also has AutoCorrect and other features WordPefect doesn’t.”
I have WP9 and Word at the office and WP10 at home. I’ve never noticed that the autocorrect, footnotes, or fonts features in Word are any easier to use than the same features in WP. And Word (1) doesn’t have reveal codes, (2) can’t import and export in upteen word processing formats the way WP can.
Thanks for the comments, folks. I have had Word forced down my throat at work for around a year now, so I feel that I’ve had an adequate amount of time to give it a try. (I use Word for all shared-project stuff; I stick with WordPerfect for my independent projects.) I’ve come around on the spreadsheet side and consider Excel slightly better than Quattro, but I still just plain hate Word. I’m a control freak, and I like (WordPerfect’s) ability to view codes and obliterate or replace the ones that offend me. I don’t like Word’s insistence that it knows better than I do how to do things like indent and number paragraphs. (Yes, I’ve turned off as much of the #%@$#*% automatic formatting as I could.) I find moving repositioning graphics to be unwieldy in Word, but quick and easy in WP.
So, instead of having this turn into a discussion of the relative merits of the two programs (which would be better off in IMHO or GD), I’d like to try to re-direct this back to the OP. I guess my basic question now is, does anyone know if the WP 9 contained in the WordPerfect Family Pack is a stripped down version, or if it is a fully functional version of the older version that they’re dumping at a lower cost now that they have version 10.0 on the market?
(Sorry if this sounded snippy. I didn’t intend it to be, since you’ve offered helpful comments. However, I think you’ll hear Jack Chick saying that homosexuals are really fine folks before you hear me singing the praises of MS Word.)
YWalker, I’m a Mac user, and I always feel guilty when I hear about PC users having Word thrust upon them by their employers because Microsoft honed Word on the Mac platform first. I hated Word back in the version 3 days and I haven’t seen anything to change my mind since. Word sucks.
I have WordPerfect for the Mac, and I can see the attraction, although I eventually decided on Nisus Writer.
As for Quattro Pro, I’d like to see a Mac version come out, and I’d probably buy it if they released it, but I have to admit that Excel is a pretty cool application. In fact, I think it’s the best product to ever bear the Microsoft label. My reasons for wanting a Mac version of Quattro Pro have more to do with feeling uncomfortable with having just one industrial-strength spreadsheet program on my platform than any dissatisfaction with Excel.
For the OP, I believe the WP in the family pack is the regular version of WP. One major difference would be the absence of a database and probably Presentations from the suite.
[sub]As to the hijack, I demanded WordPerfect at work because, well, Word sucks. As does Excel, but we’re stuck with that because everyone else uses it.[/sub]
I used to love Quattro–it appears to me that the first Windows version (long before they were purchased by Corel) was far superior to the version now. The graphing capabilities were phenomenal, well beyond anything out there now. Or so it seems…
Johnson — Has Quattro really gone downhill? I think the last version of it I used was the one of the first ones after they converted from Windows. (Had to learn a new macro language entirely for it.) I did really like the graphing capabilities. Graphing is one of the quirky things I’ve mentioned about Excel — it can drive you nuts by accepting changes that you’ve made (such as font sizes for axis labels, etc.), and then spontaneously regenerate to the previous version for no apparent reason.
[sub]Asking partly because I’m genuinely curious, and partly as a shameless bump to catch the attention of the folks who only post during the work week…[/sub]
I don’t use it personally, but I know several people who do. They love it and say it’s more than adequate as a replacement for MS Office. I don’t know if it has your three must-haves.
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