WordPerfect's New Version Is No Improvement
If there were such a thing as a hospice for software, WordPerfect would have checked in a long time ago. Its fall from the summit to the cellar of the productivity-software market has few parallels in the business. But the program -- owned by Corel since 1996 and now sold mostly as part of an office suite -- has soldiered on. In the past two years it's even gained ground, thanks to aggressive bundling deals that put it on the hard drives of computers from Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard and Sony.</br></br>The new WordPerfect Office 11, however, isn't about to win any more converts. It offers few major changes (and fewer still that are relevant to home users) while leaving long-standing flaws. If you get a copy free on your next computer, you won't be terribly disappointed, but I can't recommend buying it over the competition.</br></br>Let's start with WordPerfect itself, the heart of the suite and the component that home users probably spend the most time with. As a tool for everyday writing, it's perfectly usable, but it's also entirely unremarkable.</br></br>Version 11's most hyped new feature, the ability to save a document in XML, or extensible markup language, is meaningless for home users. Its second most hyped addition, a "Classic Mode" that mimics the simple text-based interface of DOS versions of WordPerfect, mainly illustrates how grotesquely complicated word processors have become. (It may also cause flashbacks to long-ago temp jobs and internships; use with care.)</br></br>WordPerfect 11 continues to lack conveniences offered by competing programs, such as the ability to select separate blocks of text. Its word-count function is hidden in the File menu, where most people won't think to look for it. If you want to add photos or images to a document, the dialogue box to select a picture file lacks a preview pane to indicate which graphic you're about to select.