Product Reviews

Works Suite 2002 includes Works 2002 (reviewed opposite) and adds 2002 editions of Word, Encarta Encyclopaedia, Picture It! Photo, Money and AutoRoute. Officially, Works Suite is an upgrade from a previous version of Works, Word version 6 or later or WordPerfect 4 or later, although you may also receive it via a new PC software bundle.

Unless you're a new PC owner with the software pre-installed, you'll encounter a particularly convoluted installation routine for the entire Works Suite. There's one overall setup program, but that only does some of the work, as it keeps handing over to the individual application setup programs, which can invoke certain bizarre quirks.

Word 2002 (see Reviews, issue 81, p170) is a more enhanced word processor than that available through Works 2002, with just about all the features you could want. What's most encouraging is the 2002 version brings with it the easiest of all Word's previous interfaces, meaning that users can gradually use features as and when they need them.

Encarta Encyclopaedia Standard 2002 (UK and Ireland Edition), to give its full name, gives you access to a wealth of knowledge about the world and times in which we live, with a UK and Ireland tilt. The user interface is slightly non-standard, but it's simple to search for a word or phrase and skip between linked articles to find out more. Being a multimedia encyclopaedia, there are, of course, pictures, maps, diagrams, speech, sounds, music, video and animations as well as basic text. The articles appear to be well researched and balanced, and the lightly localised content is definitely a bonus over the usual US one, such as Encarta Reference Library (see Reviews, issue 86, p209). As an added bonus, you can download updates for the Encarta Encyclopaedia, which are free until October 2002. This in some way compensates for items missing from this standard version, as compared to the Encarta Reference Library, such as the virtual tours, the Interactive World Atlas, dictionary and thesaurus.

Our current A-Listed personal finance package is also part of the suite, dubbed Microsoft Money 2002 Standard (Personal and Business version reviewed issue 89, p138). The Standard Edition of Money 2002 excludes the Portfolio Manager, Tax Planner, Lifetime Planner, Business Accounts and Invoicing. But even with this version, you can set up and track your bank and credit card accounts, with many UK banks now providing facilities to download statements into Money, which relieves the tedium

If you're a regular Microsoft Office user, you'll immediately note that Money has a slightly different style of user interface. A particular annoyance is that it pops up sidebars when you browse online stores and similar Web sites, asking if you can afford 'this purchase'. A version of Money for the Pocket PC is also available separately, but I found that running both at the same time made the combination a little unstable.

The European Edition of AutoRoute 2002 (see Reviews, issue 87, p209) is no cut-down provision, with detailed, street-level maps for England, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. That said, only major urban areas in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland are covered. And for the rest of Europe, including Northern Ireland and Eire, you have to make do with the major roads only. AutoRoute contains the same data as MapPoint (see Reviews, issue 83, p171) and suffers from the same mistakes. For instance, every national park boundary in the UK is mangled. The maps show two boundaries, one shifted about a quarter of a mile (0.4km) south east from where it should be. Try to calculate a trip from the UK to Ireland and you'll almost certainly be sent on the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin even though it might be much quicker to use another route.

Foibles aside, AutoRoute is easy to use and mostly fulfils its remit admirably. Used with a little care, it produces driving directions and maps that can be very useful when driving in unfamiliar territory. You do, however, have to interpret some of the directions for the real world.

Picture It! Photo is photo-editing software of the simplest kind. That said, there are still lots of effects available including cropping, positioning, duplicating, edges, frames, colouring, drawing and adding text. The application tries to encourage you with examples of what you could do and even prompts you to 'share' your photos by uploading them to MSN Communities.

At the heart of Picture It! Photo are a selection of editing tools, most of which first appeared in Microsoft's discontinued PhotoDraw product. You can turn a photograph into a line drawing, an etching, a watercolour, a charcoal sketch and so on, as well as add text with outline and fill effects and generally play about by combining images, text and effects.

The user interface tries to guide the users in what to do, although, overall, the application is definitely for novice users - accomplished photo-editors will long for more functionality and less patronisation. As an example, options appear down the left-hand side of the window with fly-out menus and panels of steps.

Overall, Works Suite 2002 offers very good value and many people will find the majority of the package useful. The non-standard user interfaces of many of the packages may suit novice users, but it would be nice if experienced users could turn them off and use standard menus and toolbars.