For years, serious computer users have turned up their noses at Works. Microsoft's application suite for home customers has lived in the shadow of Office, its bigger, more powerful, more businessy sibling. But even the most demanding users could benefit from taking a sober look at the latest Works Suite.

No longer just a pale shadow of Office, Works Suite 2000 is surprisingly powerful yet easy to use, with a focus on making home tasks simpler. Its excellent collection of tools integrate nicely via a slick interface. And because it comes with a copy of Microsoft Word 2000, Works Suite 2000 can serve as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office for business users who don't need an industrial-strength spreadsheet or database program.

Suite Inside a Suite

Works Suite 2000 is a suite surrounding a suite. It's built around Works itself--which has been upgraded from Works 4.5 to Works 2000. Like Works 4.5, Works 2000 includes basic spreadsheet, database, and calendar applications. The spreadsheet in Works 2000 shares much of Excel's basic functionality--including built-in formulas and charting--but lacks such sophisticated tools as filtering and pivot tables. You can save spreadsheets either in Works' native format or as Excel or 1-2-3 files. The easy-to-set-up, flat-file database allows you to save data files in dBASE or CSV (comma-delimited) format and is suitable for such relatively straightforward jobs as keeping track of your home inventory or stamp collection. Both the spreadsheet and the database are accompanied by templates to get you started on typical household tasks. You also get a no-frills appointment-and-address book.

Top vendors including Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, and Sony will bundle Works 2000 with their home systems. Meanwhile, Works Suite 2000 and its watered-down cousin, Works Basic Suite 2000 (which leaves out Word), are sold in retail stores.

Works Suite 2000 adds a lot to its Works 2000 base. The most impressive addition: a full-blown version of Word 2000, the Web-enabled incarnation of the hugely popular word processor. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, Word is the number one reason consumers buy Works.

Besides Works and Word, Works Suite 2000 includes a slew of home-specific components, among them Money 2000 Standard (not contained in the beta version that we reviewed). You can maintain a home budget and pay your bills with this standard version of Money, but it lacks some investment tools active traders might want. For those, you'll need Money 2000 Deluxe.

Nothing Fancy

The new suite also packs elementary publishing tools. Home Publishing 2000 lets you create greeting cards, calendars, banners, and simple multimedia projects. And the program includes 100,000 or so clip-art images (organized through the searchable Clip-Art Gallery), plus a battery of sound clips and animations. Picture It Express 2000 is a basic photo imaging tool that lets you retouch digital photos (to remove scratches or correct colors, for example).

Finally, Works Suite 2000 provides a small avalanche of home-oriented content, including Encarta Encyclopedia 2000, which consists of some 36,000 searchable entries, articles, video clips, and animations. Owners of the software are entitled to download updated content every month until December 2000 (be sure to set aside a megabyte of hard disk space for each download). Expedia Streets and Trips 2000 lets you find addresses, plan trips, and go online to get current information on weather conditions and even road construction. Money 2000 Standard, Home Publishing 2000, and Encarta Encyclopedia 2000 all have similar links to Microsoft Web sites for additional updated information.

Solid Integration

Bringing all these individual elements together is the Task Launcher, with which you can select either a task (such as 'Household management' or 'Travel information') or a specific program. As in previous editions of Works, the individual programs are nicely integrated--when you are creating a form letter in Word, for example, you can import database addresses for the mail merge.

Works Suite 2000 does have its faults. For one thing, the Setup module doesn't give you the option of working with Word 97 instead of Word 2000. You can elect not to install Word 2000, but in that case Word 97 won't show up in Task Launcher. The suite is greedy, too, gobbling 785MB to 1.4GB of disk space and at least 32MB of RAM. But given the power of today's home computers, those requirements should not be overwhelming.

Works Suite 2000 is a bona fide productivity suite, specifically tailored for home users. The question is whether it's robust enough to do the job in a business setting. The inclusion of Word 2000 means that Works Suite 2000 has all the productivity applications many users need. But if your work requires sophisticated spreadsheet, database, or publishing tools, Office will remain your suite of choice.

Product Information
Works Suite 2000
	Microsoft
	800/426-9400
	www.microsoft.com/works
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