Putting WordPerfect Office X3 to the Test

Few have succeeded in ending Microsoft’s dominance in the office-suite space. Once again, the latest contender to attempt to dethrone the reigning “incumbent” is Corel. Test Center engineers reviewed the latest offering from Corel, WordPerfect Office X3, to see if the product has what it takes to get noticed. Announced on Jan. 17, Corel has introduced both home and business versions of WordPerfect Office X3, clearly taking aim at Microsoft’s Works product and, of course, Microsoft Office.

This time around, Corel is offering feature-by-feature compatibility across Corel’s word processor, WordPerfect; its spreadsheet, Quattro Pro; its presentation package, Presentations; and its e-mail client, WordPerfect Mail. Each element of Corel’s package aims to replicate the functionality found in Microsoft’s individual components of Office, but at a much lower cost. WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition will retail for $159, while the Home edition will retail for $79.99.

Test Center engineers found the Standard Edition abundant in features. The product’s ability to mimic MS Office will sharply reduce any learning curves, while enhanced features, such as native PDF import and export capabilities, bring a richness to the product.

Security-conscious users will like the ability to strip metadata out of documents, which helps to meet privacy concerns. Test Center engineers found compatibility to be excellent, and the additional features easy to use, thanks to the product’s intuitive interface.

Those same observations hold true for Quattro Pro. Some tasks that can be complicated in Excel, such as graphing, are noticeably more straightforward.

There are few differences between Corel’s Presentations and PowerPoint. Corel’s startup wizard makes initial creation a snap and support for MacroMedia Flash object creation introduces new interactive capabilities. File compatibility also proved to be very good.

Corel has done an admirable job of creating a competing product to MS Office, but because MS Office is so entrenched in the market, Corel may have a hard time garnering market share. Perhaps the biggest opportunity for Corel will come from the system builder/white box market, which is always looking to bundle cost-conscious applications with its hardware offerings.