Sarasota PC Monitor
Gobe Productive
A Software Review
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Gobe Productive is a software suite that includes word processing, spreadsheet, graphics and presentation components. It is provided with a license that is quite different from the usual "one machine" per license. The home use part of the license states "you may install Gobe Productive onto the hard disk of every computer in your primary personal residence, including laptop, notebook or other portable computers, owned by you for personal use." Also, " you may make one backup copy of Gobe Productive, provided your backup copy is not installed or used on any other computer." The license for business or commercial ventures allows installation on a primary desktop computer workstation and one secondary laptop, notebook or other portable computer. This is far more reasonable than most software licenses. Just compare it to the license for Office XP with its requirements for activation and limited installation to one desktop and one laptop.
The word processing software resembles MS Word. Documents can be saved in a number of formats including Word doc, RTF, csv, pdf, plain text and Gobe Productive's own format. If you save the document in any format other than the Gobe format, you will greeted with a window asking for the file name and when you select the same name, you get another request as to whether or not you want to overwrite the current file. Only when you save the file in the Gobe format do subsequent saves occur without questions.
There are other differences when you compare Gobe with Word. In Word, the first word in a sentence can be automatically capitalized, not so in Gobe. The word "I" is also automatically capitalized in Word but not in Gobe. Dates and days of the week will be automatically entered when you start typing them in Word. This does not occur in Gobe. You must use the "Insert" menu to add either date or time to your document. Neither does Gobe have an automatic correction for frequently mistyped words. Also lacking in the word processing environment is a "widow/orphan" control. This topic is not even listed in the Help files, however, for many types of documents I believe it is a necessary function. Please understand that these are not major deficiencies in Gobe. They are just nice functions to have that are found in other word processors. Even though this is version 3, it is obvious that some more "polish" could be added to this application. I also downloaded an update, ver. 3.03, but found no significant differences in it.
Other than these differences, the basic word processing functions are quite easy to use, especially if you are already familiar with MS Word. Text editing, word, line and paragraph selection and the marking of misspelled words is identical to MS Word.(Incidentally, this review is being written with the Gobe software and saved in MS Word format.) Anyone looking at the screen appearance of the word processor or the spreadsheet would find it to be a familiar interface.
Gobe also has a number of samples of various documents. Most of these are one page combinations of text and graphics. There is a sample brochure, ad pages and business cards. Gobe appears to be primarily designed to simplify the mixture of text and graphics, not just word processing. In fact, the primary topic in the Gobe Help files relate to the graphic environment.
I also used Gobe Productive to read the comma separated format (*.csv) of a spreadsheet. I then saved it in MS Excel (*.xls) format. Then I transferred it to another computer and read it into Excel. I also transferred an Excel spreadsheet to the computer which had Gobe installed. Both processess worked without a whimper. I did not test any Excel formulas, however, the documentation indicates that a full range of formulas is available.
My final test of Gobe was to use the presentation function to create a slide show. This worked very quickly and easily using some pictures that I had already stored on the computer. Gobe can insert many different graphic formats including jpeg, gif, bmp, wmf, tiff, tga, png, pict and ppm. Gobe also has various types of fade-ins that can be used with each slide. That worked quite well. However, when I tried to activate the slide show without showing the editing menu, I couldn't access that function. I was also unable to have the cursor show during the slide show so I could point out various items on individual slides. The Help file referred to an Options menu in the Presentation panel. I was never able to find the Options menu. Without that menu, there didn't seem to be any way to turn on either of these functions.
Gobe has a very complete set of drawing and graphic editing tools. These can be used in designing graphics for use in presentations. Although you can design and produce slide presentations with Gobe, they can not be saved in a MS Powerpoint format, only in the Gobe format.
There are a few other disparities between the Help files and the program. For example, the Help files refer to "frames" and their insertion, manipulation, etc. In order to access the frames you need to turn on the graphics tool bar. However, when you do so, there are no tools which refer to frames. I found this to be very odd as Gobe seems to indicate that the graphics environment is the fundamental environment for this software suite. If you right click a section of the screen there is a selection for frame properties in the menu that appears. This selection, at least when working with graphics, lead only to a form for an Internet address entry.
As a final test of a Gobe formatted document, I transferred the .DOC file for this review to another computer. Then I opened it in Microsoft Word. It looks and behaves exactly like any other Word document. So, I think there would be no problem moving documents between Word and Gobe Productive. Anyone who needs MS Word or Excel capability and doesn't want to pay the price for MS Office should seriously consider this product.
Gobe Productive is produced by Gobe Software, Inc., 917 SW Oak St., Suite 412Portland, Oregon 97205. The introductory price is $75.95 and can be ordered through their Website: http://www.gobe.com. Gobe has also indicated that any user group member will be able to order the software at this price. So if the introductory price is no longer in effect on their Website try http://www.gobe.com/UGorder. :
Copyright 2002. This article is from the August 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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