Ability Office 4

Ability Database takes Access files in its stride, and comes with a small selection of pre-defined tables for tracking business records. Oddly, considering the price, there's nothing here to appeal to the home user, such as CD-logging or recipe databases. The simple interface makes it easy to create new tables and build queries without ever seeing a line of code. You can manually edit the SQL that sits behind your creations, but it's easily avoided. We had some problems calling up the form editor, but as we were testing a beta version of the suite we hope this will have been ironed out by the time you read this.

Lastly, Ability Presentations seems the most blatant of all the modules in its Microsoft mimicry, in that it only understands native PowerPoint files. Unfortunately, it had a couple of difficulties with what we'd consider a fairly basic file. We imported our standard test document, created in PowerPoint to take advantage of several of the application's key features. Ability Presentations opened it without complaint, but down-sampled the resolution of a GIF, replaced WordArt with solid boxes in colours that matched the WordArt font colour, and ignored the checkerboard and vertical blinds transitions we'd applied to two slides.

Ability Office leads the pack when it comes to value for money, OpenOffice aside. It looks good and is easy to use, too. What it isn't is a training ground for Microsoft Office wannabes; if you look at it that way you'll be disappointed. However, if you're after a competent, sturdy suite that will read and write basic Microsoft-compatible documents, this is an excellent choice, particularly for home use. Business-critical users with a Microsoft aversion would do better to stick with OpenOffice or WordPerfect for ultimate peace of mind.