Microsoft Office Rivals Include One to Avoid And a Good Alternative
Microsoft Office for Windows is the world standard for performing key productivity tasks like word processing, building spreadsheets and creating presentations. But Microsoft hasn't added any fundamental innovations for consumers to these core elements of Office since around 1995.
So can somebody do better? To find out, I've been testing two office suites that have appeared in the past month or so. One is an upstart from China, and the second is an old standby from Canada. For this review, I didn't include StarOffice, also known as OpenOffice, an "open source" office-suite alternative I tested late last year and found wanting.
I evaluated the two new entries in three major areas: price, features and compatibility with Microsoft's file formats, which, fairly or unfairly, are the world standards.
Right off the bat, the contenders, Evermore Integrated Office from China and WordPerfect Office 12 from Canada, suffer in comparison with Microsoft Office. Neither has a module comparable to Outlook, the integrated e-mail, calendar and address-book software Microsoft includes. But I didn't view this as a fatal flaw, because there are plenty of standalone options.
So I judged the programs instead on the core productivity functions. And I focused mainly on word processing, since that function is used by far more people than any other.
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Evermore, from Wuxi Evermore Software, claims two major features it says Microsoft Office lacks. First, its maker says it has a single interface for all three types of documents -- word processing, spreadsheet and presentations. Next, it claims to have a single file format for all three.
But neither of these claims is exactly true. You still have to select which type of document you want, and the interfaces are actually slightly different. Worse, toolbar icons from the modules you aren't using stay on your screen, taking up space.
As for the unified file format, that's also a stretch. Spreadsheet, word-processor and presentation documents each have their own distinct file formats. The so-called unified file format is actually a sort of digital container, called a binder, that can contain multiple files of each type. But it isn't new. Microsoft introduced the same sort of format, also called a binder, in the mid-1990s, but phased it out due to lack of user interest.
Evermore's flashiest feature is "Paste Link," which lets you link data in word-processor documents and presentations to an underlying spreadsheet. When you change the spreadsheet, all the numbers linked to the spreadsheet in the other documents change automatically. But this isn't new either. Microsoft has had something very similar for years, but says few people use it.
Evermore also did a poor job of importing documents created in Microsoft Word. In my tests, it scrambled layouts and graphics. In addition, Evermore's program actually costs more, for home consumers, than Microsoft Office. Its consumer version is $149, while the Student and Teacher edition of Microsoft Office can be picked up for around $126. Despite the name, Microsoft admits privately that it intends this latter version for any family at home and deliberately doesn't require proof you're a student or teacher.
Overall, Evermore has the feel of an unfinished product. Fonts look jagged and uneven on the screen because the company disabled a common font-smoothing technique called "anti-aliasing." The help screens take forever to launch, and when I installed Evermore, it scrambled my desktop icons. All in all, I can't see any advantage in using Evermore Integrated Office.
Wordperfect Office 12, from the Canadian company Corel, is the latest version of the once-dominant office suite Microsoft crushed back in the 1990s. It is a much better, cleaner and faster product than Evermore and a decent alternative to Microsoft.
WordPerfect Office did the best job of any alternative suite I've tested at importing and properly displaying Microsoft Office documents, as well as saving files in Microsoft formats. There are special "compatibility toolbars" that let you save documents in Microsoft's formats with a single click. And you can choose to substitute icons and menus that approximate Microsoft's user interface instead of WordPerfect's.
WordPerfect also has a few features Microsoft Office still lacks. For instance, when you are considering changing the font, size or alignment of a selected block of text, the program instantly gives you a preview, right in the document, of what the change will look like.
WordPerfect Office can also quickly and easily save any document in Adobe's PDF file format, a universal, cross-platform file type.
And WordPerfect maintains its famous "reveal codes" feature, which allows you to dig into any section of text and make minute changes to formatting by altering the underlying computer codes. I'm not a fan of this feature, but some types of users, especially lawyers, seem to love it, and Microsoft has nothing that really matches it.
Plus, WordPerfect Office is cheaper than Microsoft Office. Its student and teacher edition, which like Microsoft's is really aimed at any home user, can be bought for about $90.
Personally, I plan to stick with Microsoft Office. Despite my distaste for Microsoft's monopoly, it does the job and is reasonably priced for consumers. But, if you're looking for an alternative, try WordPerfect.
微软办公软件替代品有优有劣
在执行某些重要的创造性工作时，比如进行文字处理、创建电子表格和制作简报等，Windows系统所应用的微软办公包Microsoft Office已经成为全球最常用的软件。但自从1995年前后，微软公司(Microsoft)就未曾在Office核心软件的基础上添加任何重大创新内容。
其他生产商能做得更好吗？为此，我一直在测试上月前后上市的两款办公软件包，分别由中国一家新兴企业和加拿大一家老牌企业推出。本期栏目不包括StarOffice（又名OpenOffice），这是一款“开放式”的办公软件包，我在去年年底进行了测试，觉得它还不够格。
我主要从以下三个方面评估了这两款新产品：价格、性能以及与Microsoft Office文件的兼容性。不管怎么说，Microsoft Office毕竟是世界上最常用的软件包。
与Microsoft Office相比较的话，竞争者──中国的永中Office和加拿大的WordPerfect Office 12──立刻就会显得相形见绌。这两款新产品都没有堪与Outlook媲美的程序（Outlook是Microsoft Office自带的软件，集电子邮件、日历和地址簿等功能于一身）。但我并不认为这是致命的缺陷，因为除了Outlook外，还有很多功能独立的软件可供选择。
于是，我主要是从核心的创造功能方面去评判这两款新软件。我主要侧重于文字处理功能，因为毕竟使用这个功能的用户是最多的。
据中国生产商无锡永中科技(Wuxi Evermore Software)称，他们推出的永中Office拥有Microsoft Office缺乏的两大功能：第一，永中Office对文字处理、电子表格和简报制作这三种文件，都拥有统一的界面；第二，对于文字处理、电子表格和简报制作，永中Office拥有统一的文件格式。
但实际上，厂家所声称的这些优点都不完全切合实际。你仍然需要选择你希望采用什么格式的文档，各个界面之间实际上也微有差别。更糟糕的是，那些你当前不使用的工具栏图标会一直在屏幕上出现，占据了上方的空间。
至于所谓的统一文件格式，也和生产商的说法存在差距。文字处理、电子表格和简报制作，每个都有自己独特的文件格式。所谓的统一文件格式，实际上是一种名为binder的数字式容器，它能够容纳多个不同格式的文件。但这并不是新鲜玩意儿，微软在20世纪90年代也曾推出同名的一款软件，但后来由于用户缺乏兴趣而逐渐淡出市场。
永中Office最华而不实的功能是Paste Link，这种功能可以让你将文字处理文档和简报制作中的数据与一个相对应的电子表格链接起来。当你修改电子表格中的数据时，所有在其他与电子表格链接的文档中的数据也会自动改变。但这个功能也不是创新，多年以前微软公司曾经有过非常类似的产品，但据说很少有人使用这种功能。
在导入Microsoft Word文件时，永中Office也相当糟糕。在我的测试中，文件的版面和图表转换后都被弄乱了。另外，永中Office软件对于个人用户来说也比Microsoft Office贵。永中的个人用户版售价是149美元，而Microsoft Office的教学版用126美元左右就能买到。尽管名称不同，但微软私下里曾经承认Microsoft Office后期的教学版是面向家庭用户的，而且购买时不需要证明自己是学生或教师。
总的来说，永中Office给人感觉是一款并不完善的产品。字体在屏幕上看上去不整齐，因为生产商没有使用一种名为anti-aliasing的常用字体调整技术。另外，启动帮助程序非常慢，而且当我安装永中软件的时候，桌面的图标被弄乱了。总而言之，我看不出使用永中Office的任何优势。
加拿大公司Corel生产的Wordperfect Office 12是老产品的翻新版本，原产品在20世纪90年代曾一度风行，后来被微软的产品击溃。和永中Office比起来，这款软件更好、更简洁，速度也更快，是Microsoft Office一个很好的替代品。
在我所测试过的替代性软件中，WordPerfect Office在输入和正确显示Microsoft Office文档，以及以Microsoft Office格式储存文件等方面，都是表现最出色的。在工具栏里有特殊的“兼容性”图标，可以帮助你轻轻一点就能以Microsoft Office格式储存文件。另外，你还可以选择用与微软用户界面类似的图标和菜单来替代WordPerfect的图标和菜单。
WordPerfect也拥有一些Microsoft Office至今仍缺乏的功能。比如说，当你打算对选定的一段文字进行字体、字号或排列方式的改变时，WordPerfect能够立即给你提供预览，就在这个文档中，让你看看修改后的效果如何。
WordPerfect Office也能迅速、轻易地存储任何PDF格式的文件（Adobe公司的PDF文件是全球普遍应用的跨界面文件类型）。
WordPerfect还有个著名的“显示源代码”功能，能够让你查看任何一段文字的源代码，并通过修改计算机源代码来对文件格式进行微调。我对于这一功能并不热衷，但有些用户，特别是律师，很喜欢它。Microsoft产品并不具备真正与之类似的功能。
另外，WordPerfect Office比Microsoft Office便宜。WordPerfect Office的教学版花90美元左右就能买到，它和微软的产品一样，实际上也是面向所有家庭用户的。
就我个人而言，我打算仍继续使用Microsoft Office。尽管我很讨厌微软公司的垄断，但Microsoft Office好用并且价格合理。当然，如果你想寻找一款替代产品，我建议你试试WordPerfect。
