MCR Online Rating:

 

What do you do when you are attempting to make a good decision about a software package purchase? That's easy! You start by comparing products. The problem is that you don't want to purchase two or three products that interest you just so you can pick the one you needed all along. Corel has saved you the worry of making the wrong choice with its newest release of Corel Office Professional 7 Suite.  

Hmm..., does this sound like a sales pitch? Well you're wrong because this review is being completed using Corel's WordPerfect 7 word processor by a reviewer that has been using Microsoft's word processor for a long time. Corel can be complimented on this package they have put together. Anyone who has just purchased a new computer or considering upgrading their software should try this suite program. Let me tell you a little bit about what's under the hood and some of the little things that make this package so likable.

 Corel Office Professional 7 Suite - for Windows 95

 Contains four "core" applications (32-bit design):

·         "Corel WordPerfect® 7" - the "Statue of Liberty" of word processors.

·         "Corel Quattro® Pro" - easy to use award winning spreadsheet with new chart styles.

·         "Paradox" - very powerful database with some pre-made business and personal ready to use templates to choose from.

·         "Corel® Presentations" - presentation graphics program with text, video, sound, and numerous other capabilities.

 Other included applications:

·         "Corel Barista" - technology that allows users of the "core applications" to create documents based entirely on the Java Language without any programming requirements.

·         "CorelDRAW 6" - a vector-based drawing application with panning and spiral tools, polygon, roll-up customization, layer control, and seamless texture fills.

·         "InfoCentral 7" - a highly customizable personal information manager. It allows you to connect information with other applications and related files such as documents, faxes, calls, and e-mail.

·         "Corel Time Line" - a professional project management program with powerful multi-project capabilities and tools for planning, managing, and communicating resource allocations.

·         "Corel A to Z" - a comprehensive on-line reference library including a dictionary, encyclopedia, and more.

·         "CorelFLOW 3" - a powerful flowcharting program with the feel of "Corel Presentations".

Other included features:

·         "Envoy 7" - an electronic publishing tool for CD-ROM and the Internet. Acts as a universal document viewing standard.

·         "Starfish Software’s Sidekick 95" - the most popular personal information manager and scheduler.

·         "Starfish Software’s Dashboard 95" - an integrated application and task automated launcher. It also acts as a Windows 95 system performance monitor.

·         "Desktop Application Director (DAD)" - a customizable system palette allowing you to launch "Corel" applications from the task bar.

·         "Quick View Plus" - allows you to view over 200 file formats quickly and easily.

·         "QuickFinder" - a file/folder finding tool.

·         "1000 fonts and 10,000" clipart images with reference manual.

·         "Netscape Navigator" - Internet Browser.

 

 

 Individual Application Reviews

 To keep this review in perspective, you need to know that my computer needs are for small home/office use. I consider myself a very average computer user. (This is why I make a good software reviewer). Some of the features included in "Corel Office Professional 7 Suite" are geared towards large office and power users. In all fairness to "Corel" this is understandable to make the product appeal to a larger market base. With this understanding, if you find a particular application review that does not seem too thrilling, remember that Corel Office Pro 7 is also powerful enough for use with a larger framed organization, with needs that small business owners or personal users would not fully understand, nor want to.

Corel WordPerfect 7

 

 

 

Everyone needs a word processor ! No matter how big or small your needs are, "Corel’s WordPerfect 7" will take care of those needs in the most user friendly way possible. This application should be considered as the "anchor application" for this suite. Software programs are kind of like marriages and as time goes by, it’s really the little things that count. Some "little things" that are in WordPerfect 7 are as follows: 

• "Saving Your Place" - remembers all open documents and your position within each. Save your current session, then reopen it and you will be right back where you left off.
• Location of text "Case Conversion" listed under the "Edit" selection on the tool bar. This makes more sense than Microsoft hiding it under the "Format" selection. I noted many other little "common sense" ideas that make this word processor an automatic choice.
• Having the spell checker, grammatik and thesaurus all together with the ability to just click on the tab of the desired option.
• Margins indicated by vertical blue lines. They clearly show indented text's relation to the margin, saving valuable screen real estate usually occupied by a ruler bar.
• New page numbering option, that automatically adds "Page X of Y" to documents.
• A light gray cursor indicates where a mouse click would position the cursor; particularly helpful for text insertions.
• A small gray formatting square appears throughout documents. Click on one, and you'll find context-sensitive formatting buttons.  

Do you have more powerful needs? Trust me, "WordPerfect 7" will easily fill those needs in a very user friendly manner. It evens allows you to save documents in the HTML format for web use. This application is a reflection of Corel’s ability to satisfy everyone.

Corel Paradox

A database for your business is a must. Keeping track of employees, invoices or accounts payable is the heartbeat of business. Paradox is the database of Corel Office Professional 7 suite. Mail merges from Corel WordPerfect, creating reports, labels, tables can all be automated. Paradox comes with several templates for small business, large business and personal use. These templates can be left just the way they are, or changed to meet your database needs. Paradox works seamlessly with the other products in this suite. At upload time, Corel has informed us that they have purchased Borland Paradox , so the same high quality technical support that Corel has offered its users in the past, in now available for Paradox as well.

 Corel Quattro Pro 7

This spreadsheet application remains fairly stable when compared to previous releases. The application is well balanced and should be able to satisfy both the beginner and power user alike. There are some notable improvements such as:

• An editable tool bar.
• Added support for JPEG and WPG graphic file formats.
• New chart styles, quick templates, and a mapping feature.
• A "Fit As You Go" feature that automatically widens columns when calculations become too large.

Quattro Pro is a trusted name in spreadsheet programming with options and power that we will not pretend to understand. It would suffice to say that this spreadsheet program has so many features and uses than it really is up to the user and what needs to be accomplished.

Corel Presentations 7

 I’ve used Presentations for many years now and started with the first available version. When it comes to business needs this is my first choice. You can now set up Internet links from within a Presentations slide show. It’s easy to combine multiple backgrounds, text, sound, graphics, and video all within one presentation. 

I like having the ability to animate bulleted lists and other object animation. The ease in which you can design flow charts has astonished me. Throw away any old flow chart programs and start designing them using Presentations.

CorelDRAW 6

The program is a vector based drawing application. The help was more than adequate and we had no trouble mastering some of the basic drawing capabilities. The wide range of available drawing tools and customizable roll-up bars are just some of the reasons Corel is the world's leader in graphic design. There are many special effects you can produce and basically your imagination will be your only limitation. This application will not short-change you in any way and if you have drawing needs of this type, you should consider this application an added bonus. 

InfoCentral

Although Corel refers to this program as "a personal information manager" we would disagree. It does almost everything most PIM’s do from storing names and addresses to reminding you of appointments but it just didn’t seem to be as user friendly as Starfish Software’s Sidekick 95 PIM. The good news is that Corel includes Starfish Software Sidekick 95 with this suite so you can still have the best of both worlds.  

A strong point of InfoCentral is it’s ability to link data so you can view it from different perspectives. You can also add fields to a category to suit your own needs. The learning curve seemed unusually high and geared towards large business needs. The problem large businesses may face is an employee’s unwillingness to use the program due to these drawbacks. Employees should use something they are comfortable with and enjoy and that way the application will most likely get used to it's full potential.

Corel Time Line

An application designed for professional project management. This application is geared towards very large businesses involved with multi-project management needs. You can plan, manage, and communicate your resource allocations and see any potential project conflicts with the interdependency resolution. Definitely beyond personal and very small business needs. (Corp.'s will love it)

CorelFLOW 3

A powerful and robust flow charting program. Easy to use but you can do many of the same things with Presentations. Depending on your needs, I would spend my time learning Presentations better and use it to accomplish many of the same tasks. 

Starfish Software’s Sidekick 95

 

 

OK, I’m prejudiced! This little beauty is so user friendly you will become immediately attached to it. It provides everything in the way of a scheduler and personal information manager for a person who needs to manage contacts, expenses, and other personal information. Corel makes bonus points for including this application and I’m convinced this addition is what puts the "sweet" in their suite. If you could connect information fields together as you can in InfoCentral, then you would only need this application to happily take care of all your PIM needs. 

Starfish Software’s Dashboard 95

This application falls a little short of our expectations and seemed to try to include a little too much, resulting in a cluttered look and feel. I was surprised, because Starfish did such a great job with their Sidekick PIM.  

DAD (Desktop Application Director)

This little application inserts itself into the startup menu and puts icons for only Corel Office Professional 7 applications on your task bar tray. I think it would be handier to launch any of the Corel Office Professional 7 applications through the Windows 95 cascading menu and then once you have your first application open, the icons from other compatible programs could sit on the title bar on the top of your screen allowing you instant access to the applications of your choice. Programmability of which icons appear would be an added bonus. 

You will find many other little accessories within this suite like QuickFinder, Quick View Plus, etc. Almost all the accessories are of good design and useful. Corel has done many things right with this release. Software design is a learning experience for both the programmer and the user. We can’t expect programmers to always know what our needs are but I think Corel’s software designers have definitely started to listen. 

With Christmas just around the corner, maybe Corel will produce the ultimate suite dropping InfoCentral, Corel Time Line, CorelFLOW 3, Starfish Software’s Dashboard 95, redesign DAD, and rework some type of information linking into Starfish’s Sidekick 95, they will have a package everyone will want to open!

System Requirements:

Windows

• 486/25 processor (486/66 recommended).
• 8 MB of RAM (16 MB recommended).
• CD-ROM drive (2x recommended).
• VGA or higher monitor.
• Mouse or tablet.
• 53 MB of hard disk space on a minimum installation.
• Typical install is 157 MB on the hard drive and this does not include the separate install of Paradox.
• Paradox installation requires 9 MB.

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