MS Works Suite 2003 - If You Could Only Spend $100 on Software....
Written: Jun 15 '03 (Updated Jun 16 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Key mainstream productivity applications for home users, including Microsoft Word, affordable
Cons: Similar to 2002 version, Word requires activation, 2002 version of Streets & Trips (NOT 2003)
The Bottom Line: A fine collection of productivity software, meeting many of the computing needs of home users in excellent fashion.
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| nc10's Full Review: Microsoft Works Suite 2003 (B11-00711) for PC |
Microsoft Works Suite 2003 is a full featured home productivity software suite for users of Win 98 or later. Some might call this an "Office Suite Lite" for home users, because it includes Microsoft Word 2002 and the Works spreadsheet and database software, but other than Word, the office suite tools offer nowhere near the feature set of what's included with MS Office (which is not necessarily a bad thing). But Works Suite is a fine collection of productivity software for home users, and includes six productivity packages to meet the many of the most common computing needs of home users. Most will find several of the programs included to be useful, feature rich, stable products, although some may be of no value if you are using a competing product. Works Suit 2003 includes:
Word 2002 - the same as the complete, full version you'll find in Microsoft Office XP - this requires product activation.
Microsoft Works Version 7 - An Office Suite for home users (word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar, address book)
Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2003 - The standard version of the best selling electronic encyclopedia.
Picture It! Photo 7 - Easy to use Photo editing software
Streets & Trips 2002 - A very good, very accurate trip planning program, though the even more up to date 2003 was not included
Microsoft Money 2003 - A full featured home budgeting/check register package
"In the box" you'll find a small cardboard box of 5 cd's in paper sleeves, containing complete versions of the software listed above. A "user-unfriendly" 25 character product key is pasted on the back of the small box, in extremely small print, which you'll need to type in during installation. . The manual contains several sections describing how to use Works, and a separate chapter for each of the other applications. A digital PDF version of the manual is also included, and will available from your hard drive after installation.
I had purchased a copy of Works Suite 2002 last year for my wife, you uses the word processing, spreadsheet and database software to support her piano studio. When I bought a new Dell 4550 PC earlier this year, I took advantage of Dell's offer to upgrade the included Wordperfect software package to the new Works Suite 2003 for $15 more, thinking I would get newer versions of Encarta and Streets, as well as a copy of Word for my own PC. The street price of the retail version Works Suite 2003 is $75. Only after I got my PC did I realize that Works Suite 2003 came with the 2002 version of Streets, but otherwise I was pleased with my $15 upgrade.
Microsoft's Upgrade Policy for Works Suite
Works Suite 2003 is nominally an "upgrade" version, although it requires no previous software to be installed on your system. Microsoft says the following about this upgrade:
To be eligible for Microsoft Works Suite 2003, you must be a licensed user of any one of the following applications: Microsoft Works (all versions), Microsoft Word (version 6.0 or later for MS DOS, Windows, and Windows NT Workstation), WordPerfect for MS DOS (4.0 - 5.1), WordPerfect for Windows (5.1 – 9), or productivity suites from Novell or Corel which contain these WordPerfect versions.
Anyone who has purchased a computer system in the last 10 years has likely owned one of the qualifying programs at some point, and can legally use this upgrade package. These qualifying programs do not have to installed on your system and Works does not require any proof of installation or ownership during the installation or with the $15 rebate available for purchases of Works Suite 2003.
Installation
I received Works Suite preinstalled with a new computer and did not install it myself. As with the the 2002 version, Works Suite 2003 comes in a small box containing 5 cd's with a 25 product key and bar coded security label. To see if the installation routine had improved from the tedious process required to install Works Suite 2002, I decided to install one the applications on another computer. Installation starts with inserting disk 1, the setup disk, and you are given the option for typical, minimal, and custom installations. I had Norton Antivirus running when I started the installation, which Works detected and insisted I shutdown for the installation of Works Suite 2003. "Typical" and "minimal" install all the applications, with either standard or minimal components. Custom allows you to install only the programs you want, to the locations you chose. A little over 1 gigabyte (gb) of disk space is required to install the Works Suite typical installation. You can easily use more if you do full installs of all the software. As with the 2002 version of Works, the installation is very time consuming (over an hour), and will require several disk swaps, and Works itself only installs to your boot drive, as best I can tell. The other applications, Encarta, Money, etc, can be installed on any drive in your system.
Using Works Suite 2003
Microsoft has done an admirable job putting together an affordable, easy to use, and very useful bundle of software for home users. The task launcher interface makes it easy for inexperienced computer users to get into Works and find the application he needs to start new tasks or resume old tasks easily, and it ties together the various applications under one consistent interface. Experienced users can still access each application separately through the Start menu. Some of the few new new features in the 2003 version of Works Suite include changes to make the task launcher easier and faster to use, including several project templates to help you manage big projects like vacation planning or family reunions. You can better sync financial data, maps, or addresses to your PDA. Word and Streets and Trips are unchanged from the Works Suite 2002, and the rest of the applications offer small changes. Picture It Photo offers a few minor improvements, a “mini lab” for editing several photos at once, a new file browser to easy acquisition images, and instructional “videos”. Encarta looks the same, with updated content. Money includes new tools for reconciling your checkbook with some banks’ electronic records and improved reports.
Encarta 2003 Standard
Separately, Microsoft sells 3 versions of the world's best selling encyclopedia, Encarta Standard ($24.95), Deluxe ($44.95), and Encarta Reference Library ($74.95), and rebates or discounts are often available. The version included here is the Standard version, containing over 38,000 articles, thousands of web links, images, videos, animation, and audio, and other features. The deluxe version adds more articles, and features, and the Reference library offers all that and atlases, a thesaurus and almanac. The standard version is about as complete a product as you could imagine fitting on one cd, and supplements that data with thousands of web links. The program is easy to use, very stable, with easy to read, understandable articles. You can print text or pictures from articles, watch animations, listen to audio clips, and explore interactive maps. To keep Encarta up to date,once you register Encarta, you can take advantage of the update feature to download late breaking articles and web links. When I received my new computer with Works Suite 2003, I logged on an found 41 updates for Encarta, either adding or updating over 2300 articles, with over 15mb of data on subjects like SARS, Hans Blix, and the movie Chicago. Unfortunately, on October 31 2003, this option expires, when Microsoft hopes you will be ready to purchase next year's Encarta. Encarta can be installed completely to your hard disk, so that you can run without the cd, though about 500 mb of disk space will be required.
Streets and Trips 2002
Separately, Streets retails for $44.95 before a $10 rebate, though its often heavily discounted. Streets includes a complete map of roads and highways in the United States and Canada, including the streets in even the smallest towns. To plan trips, you can type in starting and ending addresses, or choose locations on the map, and you can also chose intermediate stops. To customize trip planning, you can enter estimated start and ending time for each day, estimated driving speed, rest stops, estimated mileage and gasoline price to estimate fuel costs, a choice between quickest and shortest routes, and the ability to set a preference for interstates, toll roads, or other highways. On my 750 mhz athlon system, routing a 1000 mile trip only took a few seconds, and is almost instantaneous on my 2.6 ghz Pentium 4 system. Maps can be printed out as a overhead map view, or printed directions, "turn by turn" maps or convential trip planning strip maps (my preference). Several printing options are offered, such as setting the number of miles per page for the strip maps, and detail level. An option to print faxable maps is also offered.
One feature I would like to see added to strip maps is estimated miles and time elapsed along the way to help monitor if you are staying on schedule as you travel. One feature that I like is that you can ask Streets to locate points of interest by type. Streets includes information on over 800,000 "points of interest" or "places", though its usually only name, address, and phone number. No ratings of motels or restaurants or any other information which might help with travel planning is included. You can ask Streets to locate "places" within a given distance (0.1 to 50 miles) of your route, or within 0.1 to 50 miles of a given point. You can chose types of "places" to search for, and including 15 types of restaurants, airports, hotels and motels, gas stations, rest areas, ATMs and banks, cinemas and theaters, hospitals, campgrounds, bus and train stations, museums, historical landmarks, libraries, nightclubs, schools, shopping, stadiums and a host of others. If I keep the given distance less than a few miles, Streets can identify points of interest near the route for a 1000 mile trip well in a few seconds on my 2.66 ghz pentium IV system. These points of interest can by sorted alphabetically, or by distance from a point or route (but, unfortunately, they cannot be sorted by distance from your route's starting point or end point).
There are several good websites for planning trips, but a program like this still offers a lot of value, with many more options for printing and saving maps, lots of map detail, and routing and displaying is much quicker than even the fastest website.
Streets also includes Pocket Streets for Pocket PC, and is compatible with NMEA 0183 version 2.0 or later GPS receivers, with which you can track your position on the map. With Pocket Streets, you can save the map of an area to you PocketPC. For example, I have saved a map of the city I live in (Baton Rouge) to my PocketPC. You can't load a complete map for a long trip as one file into a PocketPC, but you can load individual maps of areas you intend to visit or pass through. Streets can be installed to run completely from your hard drive, though the installation will require more than 900mb of disk space.
Picture It! Photo 7
Picture It! Photo 7 is entry level photo editing program, which lists for $35 before a $10 rebate. A "Premium" version and a "Professional" version are also available. With Picture It!, you can acquire pictures from your scanner or digital camera, in addition to editing pictures stored online or on your computer. Editing options include reducing red eye, removing "dust/scratches", cropping parts of your picture, and adjusting tint, brightness or contrast. You can also add a few effects (turn your photo into water color, stained glass, antique, and charcoal drawings or paintings), add borders or frames, change focus, rotate pictures, create mirror images, and make many other modifications to your shots. You can add text to your photos in any font or size, and shape the text to fit in your picture or around objects in your picture. This is a basic editing package, with no more tools than I listed here, but it works well enough and will help casual hobbyists turn mediocre pictures into very nice pictures. You can also create photo calendars, greeting cards, stickers, post cards, and several other types of projects. Picture It also includes a small amount of "templates" for each type of project, for example, I counted about 17 different birthday greeting cards to choose from out of about 100 cards over all for 15 types of holidays or events.
Microsoft Money 2003
I have been a Quicken user for more than 15 years, and haven't used Money yet. Most reviews I've read put Money and Quicken neck and neck, and if you don't use either program yet, you should. You will save time by balancing your check book quickly, and if you keep track of where and how your money is being spent as you enter each check, you will have a valuable record of spending which will help you cut costs and adjust spending habits. According to Microsoft, the 2003 version of Money includes new tools for automatic balancing by comparing your account records with a banks electronic statement, predicts future bills based on past payments, the ability to track stock and index options, and better investment and comparison reports. In addition to tracking your financial assets and balancing your checkbook, Money also includes tips and conversion tools if you are switching from Quicken, will track frequent flyer miles, will estimate future taxes, and Microsoft offers a free version for your PocketPC which will sync with your desktop copy of Money.
Microsoft Works 7
Works is straightforward "office suite lite" for home users and students, and includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar, address book, and e-mail tools. When you install Works Suite, you won't find the old works word processor in the start menu or from the task launcher, where it has been replaced by MS Word. If you are a longtime Works user, and prefer to use the Works word processor, Works Suite does install it on your hard drive, and you can access it from the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Works directory by launching the executable file WksWP.exe.
Microsoft has done a commendable job trying to make Works' features accessible to casual users. The Works Task Launcher, with its simplified Internet Explorer like, highly graphical interface, allows users to either select the Works and Works Suite applications they want to open, or you can choose a task or project (a series of tasks) and Works will choose the most appropriate applications. For example, choosing a resume from the Letters and Labels category launches Word with a resume' template, while choosing a batting roster or playoff chart from the Sports and Fitness category launches the spreadsheet program with templates suited for those forms. Their are a dozen task categories in Works, including Letters and Labels, Research and Eduction, Cards and Crafts, Event Planning, and Vehicle Data. Some predefined templates are placed in task categories you might not expect, making them a little hard to find at first. For example, there is a music score template in the Research and Education Task category. A few more templates are available for free on the Microsoft Works website.
In addition to tasks, there are several predefined "projects" setup within Works, a new feature for Works. Projects are a series of tasks designed to meet a larger goal. One of the more interesting projects is "Organize a Household". From one page you can launch and track spreadsheet, database, and calendar templates for emergency preparedness, inventories of wine, music, collectibles, and assets, home maintenance planning, household chore schedules and other types of lists. Other projects include family reunion planning, fantasy sports teams, holiday preparations, vacation planning, and a few others.
These predefined templates and projects make it easy to get started using each part of Works, and the only complaint users might have would be that there are not more templates and predefined projects. The user interface is very attractive and intuitive. There's also an online Quick Tour Guide to walk users through the each part of Works. There is a history page that tracks documents that have been used with any of the Works Suite applications, allowing you to quickly revisit any task. The calendar program and address book can work like your digital daytimer, and can by sync'd with your palm and pocket PC, useful for those who don't already use Microsoft Outlook to do the same thing. You can open Excel spreadsheets, unless you have more than one worksheet or use some of Excel's advanced features. If you open an Excel spreadsheet with lots of different worksheets, only one worksheet at a time can be opened into the Works spreadsheet. Likewise, there are many advanced excel features that aren't supported by Works spreadsheet. But if you want to create a straightforward 1 page spreadsheet, you can share between Excel and Works easily.
Microsoft Word 2002
If you are used to using the word processor built into Microsoft Works, you'll quickly find that Works sets Word as the default word processor. Word, (not the Works word processor) automatically launches from the Task Launcher, and Word also launches if you chose any of the custom templates or tasks for word processing. Getting Word is what makes Works Suite a great value for the home user. You can buy Microsoft Word separately for $300, yet Microsoft includes Word in the Works Suite for well under $100. Word is an almost overwhelming powerful word processor, and is a standard in Corporate and Educational America, and having a copy allows you to share documents with just about anyone. Both of our teenage children used Word this past year to prepare term papers with good success, using footnotes, bibliographies, title pages, carefully located margins, etc. We did find it particularly frustrating when using the formatting tools in Word to adjust the size of the upper and lower margins, to meet the requirements for an English class, however.
There are a few “neat features” in Word. If you’re writing a review for Epinions and want to track the word count, you can have a floating toolbar, which you can click on to give an up to date number. Word will create a summary of your document sized in terms of number or words, sentences, or a percentage of the original document size. Word puts a “squiggly” underline under misspelled or incorrect words, and if you want it to auto correct those words. If you have a habit of typing “t-e-h” for the, Word will correct it for you on the fly. Many, probably most, home users will never come close to appreciating all of Word’s features, or the many options available, and may even be a little frustrated by those that get in the way (what if you want to type “teh” in your document and not have it autocorrected??). But since Works Suite includes both Word and the old Works word processor, in addition to the Notepad and Wordpad programs already included with windows, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Would I but Works Suite again?
Yes, this is a great value for the home user. This is a mature product, and Microsoft has included a lot of templates for each program to help users take advantage of each. Each application is top notch, and is considered 1st or 2nd in their markets. Microsoft needs to smooth out the wrinkles in the installation routine, and I sure would have liked for the 2003 version of Streets and Trips to have been included. There is not much reason to upgrade from the 2002 version of Works Suite, but if you have an older version, or a competing product, Works Suite 2003 deserves your attention.
Recommended:
Yes
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