February 2005 -- EasyOffice was given the PC Plus Value Award

"When anyone buys a new PC, one of the first items of software they want is some form of word processor, a spreadsheet application and a contact manager/ calendar. The obvious solution is Microsoft Office, but the only reason that this is obvious is that Microsoft has created a kind of hegemony where beginners, and even some more advanced users, assume that its products must be superior simply because so many people use them. The fact is, though, that Office is hugely expensive. Although there are several versions, if you want all the major applications – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher and Outlook – then you need to go for the Professional edition, which costs about £400. Unless you're made of money, you're better off looking elsewhere.

One option is EasyOffice. Don't be put off by the low price; the Premium version has 35 different applications for a fraction of the price of Office. Included in this purchase is a word processing tool, two different spreadsheet applications, a contact manager and email client, antivirus software, a calculator, a presentation tool and even a compression utility. It all sounds like an excellent deal, but the million dollar question is: how well do they all work?

If you're familiar with Microsoft's office applications, all the EasyOffice applications will look familiar. They have much the same layout, so, although you'll have to look around to find a few things, you soon feel at home.

For any prospective Office-style application to be successful, it has to support the industry standard Microsoft file formats. Not surprisingly, EasyOffice does this and more. EasyWord has support for DOC and RTF, and will also handle PDFs. You don't even need to have a full version of Adobe Acrobat, as it will enable you to email PDFs straight from the program. You can even choose the quality levels.

EasySpreadsheet and EasyPresentation also support XLS and PPT formats. Not only can you open files that you've already created in these formats, you can also save into them so that other people, who perhaps have Microsoft Office, can open them. This all works seamlessly and you don't have to do any file conversion or install plug-ins.

But it's not all about the main players. With EasyOffice, you also get a vast number of other tools that you don't get with Microsoft Office. These, unlike a lot of other suites, are actually useful. The EasyZip tool supports more formats than the built-in Windows XP compression utility. TAR and Gzip are both included but, unfortunately, you don't get the RAR format.

When you consider how little EasyOffice Premium costs, you can't help but be amazed. It does everything you could expect from a suite of productivity tools. The only thing we really object to is the pencil character, but this is a small annoyance. Unless you're determined to spend £400 on the Professional edition of Microsoft Office, you won't go far wrong with EasyOffice."

Henry Tucker