ic or bold to the text you type in the Insert Endnote window, so if you W'ant to itali- cize a book title in a note, you have to insert the note with no italics, then edit OFFICE the text in the main editing window and italicize it. EasySpreadsheet handled our complex sample worksheets reasonably well, although it did not even try to open the charts. Our 4MB Excel spread- sheet opened slowly but accurately. Easy0ffice7.0 labeled Filel and File2. Each of those EasySpreadsheet makes life simple for be- E-Press Corp, www.e-press.com. menus contains more than 20 items, in- ginners by displaying a vortical Totals ••COO cluding PDF and HTML export and items column on the right edge, showing the EasyOffice 7.0 packs more applications that store and search backup, grandfather, sums of all rows, and a horizontal Totals and utilities into one freeware package and great-grandfather versions of your column at the foot, with the sums of all than you'll findi n any high-priced suite. A files—features you won't find in better- columns, it supports about 125 functions, spreadsheet, calculator, picture shortcut keys that let you access them by array formulas, conditional formatting, fil- editor. PDr editor, presentation program, typing an underlined letter; others are ac- teritig, and macros. You cannot customize and e-mail client. EasyOffice also contains the built-in number several applications that no other office formats. You won't suite provides, including a ZIP file find Excel's data manager and a backup program. validation and other Unfortunately, quantity isn't quality. automated features FasyOffice is clearly a work in progress. Its either, but you can applications perform many and mid- certainly maintain a level tasks just as well as the high-priced budget and calculate competition, but are underpowered com- your mortgage pay- pared with free alternatives such as ments. A separate 6031'CSuitc and OpcnOffiee.org. The program, EasyBook- suite's many explanatory menus are too keeper, provides wordy to be helpful. And at times the free- preset templates for ware version seems overwhelmed with accounts receivable, advertisements for the S44 EasyOffice Pre- accounts payable, mium 70 suite, which adds dozens of other EVEN IN EASYWORD'S crowded icon set, the smiley face stands and other standard programs ranging from a VoIP (Voice over out. Clicking it inserts the poem "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann. record-keeping ftinc- Internet Protocol) client to a Web page ed- tions. itor and an encryption utility. Whenever cessible only if you zero in on them with The EasyPresentation software lives you start one of the applications in the the arrow keys or the mouse. Different up to its name by providing wizards for freeware suite, you must click on a Con- menu items lead to the EasyContaet- creating slides, recording your voice to tinue button to get past the advertisement Manager and "Old version of Easy- use in a sound clip, applying animated for the paid suite. ContactManager." But clicking on the transitions, and inserting cheerful clip-art The EasyWord had no grammar-cheeking item causes an "un- cartoon images. The packed menus in- trouble with the complex formatting of supported feature" message to pop up. clude an option to save the presentation our sample files, but it re- Despite the capacious menus, the pro- complete with Microsoft's free Power- moved all footnotes and cndnotcs without gram's feature set may not be strong Point viewer, so users with no presenta- warning, EasyWord runs in either of two enough even for high-school use. For ex- tion software can view it. PDF and HTML modes: Easy or Advanced. The Easy mode ample, the word processor can't create export aren't available from the EasyPre- has a limited feature set and ieons that you footnotes, and although it creates end- sentation program. can expand; they're clearly labeled, but notes, it doesn't automatically number or EasyOffice goes out of its way to make they're also screen hogs. renumber them, so you have to number everything easy for beginners, even pro- The word processor's Advanced mode, them by hand when you create them. If viding a separate EasyHelper program that like much of the rest of the suite, displays you add or remove a note, you have to opens with a list of frequently asked ques- the most overpacked set of menus we've find the remaining notes by hand and la- tions and lets you run a tutorial. You're seen in any software. Most word proces- boriously renumber them, in both the text warned in advance of potential problems, sors have a File menu; Ea.syWord has two. and the note. Worse, you ean't apply ital- as in a dialog that tells you to ignore error messages issued by the installer for the POf converter. OUR CONTRIBUTORS; Edward Mendelson and Richard V. Dragan are contributing editors of PC Whether the HasyOffice package as a Magazine, and Cade Metz is senior writer. Galen Fott is a freelance writer. Associate editor whole is as easy as it tries to be will de- Sarah Pike and PC Magazine Labs lead analyst Neil i. Rubenking were in cfiarge of this story. pend on the individual users. Some may

102 PC MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 16. 2004 ivww.pcma9.com FREE PRODUCTIVITY APP5

intricate Microsoft Word documents as smoothly as if it had cre- Word ated them. The Calc spreadsheet was un- fazed by our complex Processors spread- eed a free word processor without sheets, although it did the baggage of a wbole office suite? not display the data in NTry AbiWord or . the imported charts—it Open-source AbiWord 2.0 looks and showed only the axes acts remarkably similar to Microsoft Word. and background. Im- Its help system is a work in progress, but if press, the presentation you know Word, you'll find AbiWord easy editor, opened Mi- to use. Among its many advanced features THE NAVIGATOR IN OPENOFFICE.ORG'S CALC application crosoft Office presenta- are mail merge, columns, revision marking, makes it easy to move around within your spreadsheet. tions, complete with footnotes/end notes, and automatic mis- faney slide transitions. spelled-word flagging; Jarte has none of be grateful to find every function spelled The word processor and spreadsheet let tbese. AbiWord can also insert data fields, out on the menus, along with an over- ordinary users record macros, and the en- tbough not tbe wide variety found in Word. stuffed default icon set. Others may prefer tire suite supports a powerful program- On the other hand. AbiWord lacks print a program that has fewer features, but is ming language similar to Office's Visual preview, highlighting, clipboard histor/, actually easier to use. Basic for Applications. and the ability to insert objects, all fe?i- Writer duplicates most of the functions tures Jarte includes. Neither program OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 of Word and adds a built-in bibliographical includes autocorrect, f ind/repiace of ww w.openoffice .org. database designed for scientists and acade- ••••O mics. Only two views are available; Page OpenOffice.org L1.2 is the open-source and Online (akin to Word's Normal view). app on which Sun's StarOffice, another The Find menu supports regular expres- outstanding alternative to Microsoft Of- sions (including nontext items like para- fice, is based. StarOffice costs $79.95 for a graph and line breaks, formatting items like single-user license; OpenOffice is a 64MB bold and underline, and fonts) for elaborate downU)ad that installs a freeware power- wild-eard searches, and the help file ex- house that ean easily take the plaee of plains this advanced feature clearly enough Microsoft Office on most desktops. Its for beginners to use it. A well-organized full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, Format I Page dialog gives quick aeee.ss to and image and presentation editors match features like headers and footers, whieh are all the widely used features in Office; they scattered among multiple menus in Word. open and save Office documents almost But if you want to change margins in the formatting or nontext items, or support as smoothly as Office itself and add PDF middle of the page, you'll have to look in a for Unicode fonts. (Dom Lachowicz, generation from all applications. Open- different menu for the Section dialog. www.abisource.com. •••

www.pcmag.com NOVEMBER 16. 2004 PC MAGAZINE 103 FREE PRODUCTIVITY APPS

fewer conveniences. Calc matches most 602PC Suite 4.1 of Excel's advanced features sueh as con- Softwarii6O2 Inc.. www.602software.com. VISICALC ditional formatting, filtering, and pivot ta- •••OO bles (Cale calls this feature DataPilot), 602PC Suite began with some program' n 1979 Software Arts released and it officially supports array functioas, mers in the Czech Republic trying to du- VisiCalc. the "visible calculator" for although some array functions in the cur- plicate some Microsoft Office applications. I the Apple II that convinced many rent version produce errttrs or obviously It's grown into an ambitious Office re- people that there might be some use mistaken results. Calc doesn't offer the placement comprising a word processor, for a . Many years same range of preset cell formats (such as spreadsheet, photo editor (with features and many later, VisiCalc number formatting) as Excel, although reminiscent of older versions of midrange is still available, at www.bricklin.com. you can hand-build any format you like, graphics packages like lasc's Paint Shtip It's now free, rescued from oblivion just as you can in Excel. Spreadsheets are Pro), and photo albiim organi/er. all in one by its coauthor —and it limited to 32,000 rows, about half the 28MB download. You can choose between maximum in Excel, but that's large a free version (tested for this story) and a enough for most purposes; Version 2.0 licensed version for $39.95. will match Excel's maximum. The freeware version, for personal use A "floating-frame" menu item makes it only, has most of the features that Micro- effortless to display cells from another soft Word and Kxcel users actually use. spreadsheet inside the current one. Calc's They are available from menus that close- charts don't match the graphic razzle- ly mimic Office's, but with more focus than dazzle of Excel but are more than ade- Word on creating HTML, and without ap- quate for financial and scientific pur- proaching Excel's advanced charting tools. poses. The convenient Style palette The paid version—as the free one will keep displays all the formatting styles in the reminding you—adds such features as I'Dl the entire help system fits in five current sheet for one-click application to export, automatic hyphenation, thesaurus. downloadable scanned images. a selected cell or range. Considering its age. VisiCalc is The presentation surprisingly capable. If you've ever application. Impress, used it. the slash-based menu sys- bears little resem- tem and "ia'" functions will come blance to its Microsoft back quickly. Cells can contain labels counterpart, Power- or (no dates), and you enter Point, and file ex- cell references in the Al style still change between the used by modern spreadsheets such two isn't quite perfect. as Microsoft Excel. The limit of 63 Most transitions and columns and 254 rows seems less animations created in onerous when the entire sheet dis- PowerPoint displayed plays in an 80- by 25-character smoothly in an Impress window. VisiCalc's set of numeric- slide show, but some of only functions includes simple items the animations that like SUM. MAX. and AVERAGE, as well played couldn't be ac- as LOOKUP and common trigonomet- cessed and modified 602TEXrs FLEXIBLE, easy to use Magic Text contorts editable ric and logarithmic functions. You from within Impress. text into various shapes and forms. can format numbers as integer, And when we ran an " decimal, scientific, or "graph." We Impress presentation in PowerPoint, it mail merge, spreadsheet autoformatting used this last format, which displays simply ignored some animations applied and optimization, and many photo-editing a row of asterisks as long as the in Impress. conveniences. All these features are listed number, to create a graphical sine OpenOffice.org uses XML as its native on the menus of the freeware version, table. VisiCalc is surprisingly smart file format, although it's a different flavor Some of the unavailable items are grayed about replicating formulas. For each of XML from Office's, and OpenOffice out and unclickable, but others, such as cell reference in the formula, it asks can't open Office-format XML files. red-eye removal, look as though they leaJ whether to keep the reference un- OpenOffice can be set to save files by de- to the feature—but only pop up an annoy- changed or adjust it relative to the fault in Microsoft Office DOC and XLS for- ing ad for the paid version. cell position. mats. Corporate users who need a version The 6()2rext word processor matches VisiCalc won't replace Excel; its that comes with technical support can li- Word's options to view documents in draft limitations are just too great. Still. cense Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 7.0, (like Word's Normal view), page, outline, you may be amazed at how much which includes everything that's in and HTML view (but not Word 200.^^'^ calculating power is packed into this OpenOffice and adds an integrated data- Reading layout), and supports headers, 27KB historical gem. Give it a try base, commercial-quality import/export footers, and footnotes, but not endnotcs. A for a quick trip back to the early filters, additional fonts, and an integrated click on one totilbar icon splits the window 1980s—NeilJ. Rubenking desktop feature that most Windows users into an editing pane and an uneditable fijll- won't want. page view with a rectangle indicating the

104 PC MAGAZrNE NOVEMBER 16. 2004 www.pcmag.com FREE PRODUCTIVITY APPS

position on the page of the editing pane: wlien you dra^ the rectjingle, tlie edirinji p;ine chiinges contents to m.itch the loca- tion of the rectangle. bOJI ext puts headers owerbullet Presenter 1.35 lets you create impres- and footers on its Format | (Chapter menu: sive, multipage, multimedia, animated Flash pre- this makes more .sense than Word's View Psentations. The program even includes several Header and Footer menu but may leave effects you don't get in Microsoft PowerPoint. Word users at sea until they find it. An Powerbullet comes with many preset animation awkwardiy designed feature iets you build effects. You can assign them to any object or text, POWERBULLET PRESENTER 1.3S templates for documents with fili-in fields, setting delays for fade-ins, fade-outs, and more. You can insert sounds and voice record- but you can't write or record macros to ings in a presentation and work with numerous graphics file formats. You can also syn- perform other repetitive tasks. chronize sounds with pages, so that a page won't automatically advance until the sound (•>02Text's Format Brush, which provides has been played. Animating text and graphic objects is actually fun. A menu in the pro- mL'nus that let you choose when to "soak" gram's Element Animation and Effects Settings dialog gives you options with names like and "clear" the brush, is easier to use than "sneak in right," and "spin drop from left." its Word counterpart, Format Painter. The Creations in Powerbullet can also be saved as HTML or exported to an EXE file for a Find and Repiace dialog, on the other presentation that functions in an auto-advance mode. It you save to the Web. you can also hand, doesn't give you a way to search Tor view and edit the source code. nontext items like paragraphs, tabs, fonts, Powerbullet Presenter's interface has some notable niceties, such as a wizard that pops or any other formatting. up to help you create animated bulleted lists. Its interface and tool set aren't quite as rich ()02Text had no trouble importing itur as some of those in fee-based presentation products (like Liquid Media, which until re- simple text documents but got confused by cently was free for personal use), but it's a simple, flexible, and free way to assemble an elaborately formatted booklet created in presentations. (DDD Pty Ltd., www.powerbullet.com. ••••c) —Sebastian Rupley Word. It printed pages in landscape instead of portrait mode, and with one page to a sheet instead of two. We tried to create a new document with the same formatting in 602Text and found that the program Databases couldn't manage that either. 6021 ext was also eonfused by some of our Word tables ySQL 4.0 is tbe granddaddy of free ,- K and superimposed the table header over the databases. It is an industrial-strength, first rows of data. With some of our com- Mextremely scalable database with strong plex Word documents, ftflZIextdi d nothing Linux and Windows support, a proven track record at all when we tried to open the Page Setup with large organizations, and good SQL support. dialog from the File menu, and crashed Administering MySQL wril require some in- when we tried to print them, liicse prob- house database expertise. Although there is a lems never occurred with everyday docu- simple GUI administration console for viewing DBWORX 2.9 ments and ones that we created in (i()2Text. and tweaking database options. MySQL uses a The (iO2Tab spread.shcet app can handle command-line interface, mysqi. to run queries, Luckily, via ODBC, you can easily use anoth- large files and all common financial and er query tool, such as Microsoft Excel. Version 5.0 is currently in development. For a full data-managing tasks, but it choked on review of MySQL and other database apps. see go.pcmag.com/database (MySQL AB, some more complex functions. It supports www.mysql.com. ) filtering but not other important spread- dbWorx 2.9 is an easy-to-use solution with some innovative tools for creating, editing, sheet features, such as conditional format- and exporting records. You can use a GUI to create forms to manage records easily. titig and pivot tables. With a smaller but Queries are a snap, too. as are exporting and Importing data. We especially like the ability more complex multipage Excel spread- to export a dbWorx database to HTML quickly, which makes up for the app's most signifi- sheet with charts and pivol tables, fil)2Tab cant limitation: dbWorx databases cannot be accessed by more than one user at a time- had no trouble opening the shecfs formu- even as read-only files. We also like the program's ability to connect to different databases las and text formatting, but, like Open- via ODBC. (PLWorx Software Development, www.plworx-software.com. *«••! ) Office.org's Calc, it displayed only the axes The extremely lightweight XDbl—it fits on a single floppy disk—was designed for both of the charts, not the data. Windows and Pocket PCs. It's a more experimental approach to standalone databases. 602PC Suite's enhaneed File I Open and Defining data records requires mastering an intuitive though somewhat quirky set of File I Save dialogs include a customizable terms; we bet most users will be fine, XDbl has the unique ability to let you search by column of quick access icons on the left, attributes across every field, which Is much more difficult in a traditional database. Multi- with a Folder icon that lets you add your ple users can't edit data simultaneously, but they can view records remotely from an XDbl own list of document folders to a drop- server XDbl's GUI offers natural-language queries instead of using SQL. down menu. TTie suite's good-looking, un- Unfortunately, the current version won't cut if for everyday users who need standard Hashy design seems at home in Microsoft forms and reports, which are missing here Still, XDbl offers an innovative approach to Windows XP, and it performs well in a wide standalone databases; it's built for efficiency and a more intuitive way of thinking about range of tasks. But if you can't stand the data. This is definitely a technology to watch. pop-ups and don't want to pay for tlie tip- At press time a new version, XDb2. was in alpha. (Custom Microsystems, wv^w.xdbl.com. gradc, check out Open* )ffice.nrg inste.id. mm* )—Richard V. Dragan

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