TechWatch: Office, IM Monitoring; Combo Burners

A Perfect Office
Yes, WordPerfect is still around and kicking, and the latest iteration, WordPerfect Office 12, has all sorts of goodies that will tickle your office-productivity toolbars. Corel, regenerated with some new funding sources, is attempting to appeal to the SMB marketplace, but also convince existing customers to update from previous versions. There are improvements in file-format fidelity with Microsoft Office files for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (the three main applications are WordPerfect, Quattro Pro and Presentations); there's also the ability to produce Acrobat PDFs, XML and HTML documents directly without any additional software and to re-create the same screen-user interface and menu options that can be found in the MS Office products. Then there are some groundbreaking features, including the ability to annotate spreadsheets with content sent from wireless messages and support for more than 150 different file formats and for Windows 98 systems (something missing from MS Office 2003). The trouble is, how much do you have to hate Microsoft before you take the plunge?
WordPerfect Office 12, www.corel.com Price: $300 new; $149 upgrade from previous versions

Monitor That IM Session
Enterprises worried that sensitive information is leaving the premises in the form of instant-messaging chat sessions should take a closer look at Stellar Internet Monitoring (SIM). Available as either an outsourced managed service (read: there is recurring revenue in them thar hills) or as a standard standalone application, SIM will monitor all Web and IM traffic, including AOL, MSN and Yahoo IM, on a corporate network and report about where and what users have been up to. The product needs to sit near the corporate firewall and requires a small addition to the network login script, which is used to capture users' information. The reports are accessed via a Web browser and can display the contents of messages and URLs that users have visited. One feature shows how much time each user has spent surfing the Web or using IM. AOL sells something similar (read our review of AIM Enterprise Gateway v.2.0 at www.varbusiness.com), but it's just for AOL IM and without many of the features that Stellar makes, well, stellar.
Stellar Internet Monitoring, www.stellarim.com Price: Per user begins at $1,050 per year for fewer than 25 users

DVD/CD Combo Burner
Internal DVD burners that perform well are still a rarity as PC-enhancement peripherals, but BenQ has a winner with its DW800A. It does 8x DVD write, 12x DVD reading, 24x CD write and 40x CD reading, making it plenty fast for both DVD and CD operations. But the best part of the product, which fits into a standard 5-1/4-inch drive bay and attaches with the usual ATA cables, is the software bundle: InterVideo's WinDVD capture-and-editing tool so you can make copies of your old videotapes; InterVideo's WinCinema for showing DVD movies; Sonic's Record Now! CD burning tool; and BenQ's QVideo, which also transfers videotapes to DVD. I easily got it working on my Windows XP unit, and though the number of individual software CDs and disparate thin manuals could use work, the price is right.
DW800A 8X DVD drive, www.benq.com Price: $199

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