Sarasota PC Monitor
EasyOffice Premium
A Software Review
by Nancy Dennis
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.There are other choices for office suites beyond Microsoft, rel WordPerfect, and Lotus SmartSuite. EasyOffice Premium from E-Press Corporation is an option for those who do not want to spend hundreds of dollars for a complete suite of programs. EasyOffice Premium includes all that the "big guys" have to offer, plus several programs that you will not find in any of the three top sellers.
E-Press Corporation is a Canadian company that began in 1996 and has some three million EasyOffice users around the world. EasyOffice Premium is priced at $44, and gets the highest ratings from tucows.com and Amazon.com reviewers. The version I am reviewing is 6.525 released in May 25, 2004, and comes with a Single User License to install on up to three PC's. This means I can install the suite on both my PC's and my laptop.
EasyOffice will run on any computer that is using Windows, including Windows95B, Windows98, WindowsME, WindowsXP, WindowsNT and Windows2000. EasyOffice will run alongside Microsoft Office or Corel WordPerfect Office. EasyOffice will read and write most Word and Excel files.
I chose the "Typical" install and during the installation was presented with a very friendly "Question". "Would you like me to copy all the program icons into one folder on your desktop?" The Yes and No options both explained by saying "I will . . . " I found that throughout the review process all the questions and explanation screens were very personal and friendly, almost as if the software was talking directly to me.
After installation there was a folder on my desktop as well as on my Start, Programs menu. With the "Typical" install there were 37 program icons. I will not list them all here due to the limited space for this review, however please visit their web site www.e-press.com for a complete list and explanation of all the programs the suite has to offer.
Voice recognition and voice read-back is integrated in all the programs. I did not take the time to train for dictation, but I did find that the voice read-back worked well. The Word Processor and Spreadsheet programs both can save documents as Adobe PDF files. EasyOffice Premium also contains it's own EasyZip program that installs on the right mouse menu and is fully compatible with other zip programs and files. For my review purposes I will comment only on the programs and features that I explored.
EasyWord is the word processor comparable to Microsoft Word. You are able to open and save most Word documents. EasyWord is a full featured word processor able to create letters, long documents, books with chapters, table of contents, and an index. However EasyWord does not easily handle moving graphics and tables so I found it difficult to create a desktop publishing document like a newsletter. I liked the right mouse click item to choose "Dictionary (look up a word)" and have the EasySpeller program open with a place to type in a word and use just like a dictionary. The EasySpeller and EasyThesaurus are both stand-alone programs as well. The EasyContactManager can be accessed right from a button on the toolbar from within EasyWord. Let's say you need to look up an address while working on your letter. Just click the EasyContactManager icon and pick the name, then click a button to copy to the EasyWord document. More about EasyContactManager later in the review. Another handy tool I found on the tool bar was the EasyCalculator. With this program I was able to have a calculator pop up and actually print a tape of my calculations. I was also able to have the calculations copied to my document, and the tape spoke to me each time I made a calculation. Since I've never been very good with numbers on the keyboard I found this pretty nifty. EasyWord files can be saved as rtf, doc, txt, big document boc, htm and html, pdf, and EasyOffice compressed zip rtf files.
EasySpreadsheet was the next program that I used. EasySpreadsheet is full-featured and can create 100% compatible Excel spreadsheets, as well as open most Excel spreadsheets. However, it cannot open Excel graphics, nor save its graphs in Excel format. An Excel Viewer is integrated within Easy-Spreadsheet and will open any Excel spreadsheet containing graphics. In the next major version of EasySpreadsheet it is expected that you will be able to open and save workbooks as Excel documents and maintain graphics and charts. EasySpreadsheet does not support Lotus 123 files. The files can be saved as pdf, xls, txt, csv, htm, and EasyOffice's own zip format.
EasyDatabase begins with a seven step wizard to get you started on the size and type of database you are creating. EasyDatabase is a flat file database and is very easy to use. However this version in EasyOffice Premium does not include the import/export filters, so if you are planning to work with a database that already contains data you will have to input all the data by hand. In the newer version, which will be released soon, you will be able to import/export pdf, html, doc, xls, txt, zip, tar, csv, and some Access files. The application can run in stand-alone mode, file-sharing mode or client-server mode. Large databases with billions of records can be created.
EasyContactManager which I mentioned earlier can be accessed while in EasyWord, but it is also a stand-alone program. You can import your contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express or an Excel spreadsheet. There are command buttons on the right side of the screen to Print Form Letters, Form Envelopes, Labels, E-mail Form Letters, Fax Form Letter, Copy Address to EasyWord or Copy All Addresses to EasyWord. There is also EasyCalendar that is on the toolbar and will show the appointments and task lists that are imported from Outlook with the contacts. This program, like all the others, is a stand-alone calendar as well. You cannot have repeating appointments.
EasyPresentation is the suite's presentation application. It is very easy to use with buttons along the right side of the screen starting with "Start a New Presentation". There are good templates, backgrounds, special affects, and sounds included, or you can use your own. I found it very easy to create a simple slide show. When you save the slide show you can choose to include the EasyPresentation Viewer so people who do not have EasyOffice Premium can view your show.
EasyBookkeeper was the last program in the suite that I opened and used. It is a complete bookkeeping double entry accounting program that includes a balance sheet, income statement, receivables, payables and expense reports. There are several sample accounts as well as a tutorial on how to use this simple accounting program. I don't know of any office suite that includes a complete bookkeeping application.
Out of the 37 programs that installed, I have only touched on 11 of them. There is also EasyMail an e-mail client that could replace Outlook, EasyImage, an image editing application, EasyBarCode, EasyBackup, EasyWebPageCreator and more. The suite offers free web based tech support (which I tried and received a reply within 24 hours) and free upgrades via the web site for one year. There is a complete manual on the CD that can be viewed in EasyWord and printed.
Minimum system requirements are at least Pentium 150 with 32MB of RAM, in order to avoid many of the serious speed issues that occur with slower computers. And they specify that Windows should be Windows95B or higher, to avoid many of the issues with Windows95A.
Visit www.e-press.com and check their download page. There is a freeware version that can be downloaded so you can see for yourself before you decide to buy. :
Copyright 2004. This article is from the August 2004 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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