Buy Now...

Yes I did say Microsoft Word and not Microsoft Office, and the copy of Word is the 2002 version. However as most employers want Word skills it may be a worthwhile purchase.

For the novice using the front end provided by the installer is probably the easiest way to go, tell it what you want to do and you are put into the appropriate application. In fact it makes the whole thing into one huge integrated package. However should you know exactly what you want then you can just open the package you require.

If you do a full install of everything on the DVD then you will need something over 3GB of hard disc space.

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AutoRoute 2006

I have already reviewed this on 21/11/05 and I am currently looking at an enhanced version that includes GPS hardware to work with a notebook, review shortly.

Encarta 2006

This is something that has been around for many years and gets updated and tweaked every year. There are several versions but you will not be surprised that the one supplied here is the standard version, however for most it will be adequate to answer your queries. It has 36,000 entries and good multimedia content. You are entitled to the online updates and when I did this I found there is an obituary for the great Ronnie Barker who only died recently. It even links into other packages so for instance when in AutoRoute you can read entries in Encarta relating to towns/cities as you click them.

Digital Image

This is really two products in one and is now old enough to be mature, it will never replace something like Adobe PhotoShop but the average user would probably be totally lost by PhotoShop. However Adobe have a cut down product that does almost exactly what Digital Image does. The two parts are an indexing tool so you can find any photo quickly and easily, the second part is to carry out simple manipulations on an image.

Money

Perhaps the least glamorous application and also the one that needs the greatest amount of regular work from you. It keeps track of your finances and while it is probably stupid to tell most people at this time of year they are not solvent it is something you need to know in order to solve the problems.

A lot of banks now allow you to link Money to your actual account and therefore it can save a lot of manual importation of data. However banks do make mistakes and or course by keeping personal data on your PC does make you a potential target for identity fraud.

Works

This does have a simple word processor as well as a spreadsheet a database but the star of the package are it’s templates, these will certainly help the novice on his/her way to producing decent output.

Word 2002 will be the main reason for a lot of people buying Works Suite and the other goodies being just a bonus. My Internet searches found www.amazon.co.uk offering it at just under £70 inc free delivery. Beware of people offering OEM versions as this is not legal if sold to you without hardware.

www.microsoft.com/uk