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These same home office people can be forgiven if they turn a deaf ear to Microsoft's main competition, Lotus SmartSuite 97, due out this month. The Lotus suite seems geared more toward big office use. Its great distinguishing feature is its emphasis on workgroup applications. All its programs (1-2-3, WordPro, Approach) contain groupwork modes -- neat for big companies with teams, but how relevant for non-networked home office users?
As fate would have it, I, a non-netwoked home office user, have settled on Lotus SmartSuite 97, after working the past month on a late beta version. Why? I don't see how that's any of your business.
Oh all right, I'll tell you. I tilt toward SmartSuite because it is the best for using the data that I've accumulated over the past fifteen years. And because, even being part of a networked system, I am finding interesting uses for its team features.
The four keys to SmartSuite 97 are integration, workgroup orientation, Web-friendliness, and 32-bit computing. Previous versions had an umbrella shell for launching the pieces. The new shell is like a bazaar of desktop utilities and options. You can store live Internet data there, like weather and stock reports. The effect is to keep all your computing in one basket. The only reason you'll step out of SmartSuite is to use a telecom program.
Lotus 1-2-3 97. Though 1-2-3 lost its way a few years ago, this version seems fresh and easy to use. I created a pie chart on it within two minutes of launching the program. The non-threatening interface obscures the fact that the program is deeper in features than Dante's Inferno. It sports a zillion other bells and whistles. My favorite is hotlinkability: you can click on any Web URL anywhere and SmartSuite will whisk you there.
WordPro 97. The SmartSuite word processor was so screwed up when it first appeared last year that I almost bolted to Microsoft. (The only thing holding me back was that Word 7 was even kludgier.) Now quicker and better integrated, WordPro looks like it might finally have the gas to supplant the popular Ami Pro.
After the intricacies of 1-2-3 and WordPro, the other SmartSuite programs seem almost light-hearted:
Lotus Approach 97. I like it because it's dinkier than Microsoft Access. For me and most small businesses, the smaller and less full-featured the database program, the better.
Freelance Graphics 97 is the least changed of the modules. It remains the easiest presentation program around, ideal for users like me who give no more than a half dozen presentation a year, and forget how to use Microsoft PowerPoint.
Lotus Organizer 97 now lets you connect data to other applications, and log onto the Web from within the program. Curiously, it can't import ordinary Organizer data from earlier versions -- you have to export them from the earlier version to the newer one, which seems a little backwards.
Now, about the teamwork thing. What lifts SmartSuite 97 above the competition is its networkability. Every application in it is keyed toward use by teams, who can work together, or at distance, on documents. This high level team approach makes sense for large organizations. I am not even equipped, in my unnetworked situation, to evaluate them. But some I can use, and I like 'em:
Document Versioning. You can keep track of changing versions of a document, so you don't lose good stuff during a careless edit.
TeamReview. Even if you aren't networked, you can share and work on files with others via e-mail or even by swapping disks. When you evaluate a change, you know who suggested it (and how much weight to give it.)
Commenting. Anyone can comment anywhere on anything. You can print the highlights or leave them out.
Words of advice: Make sure, if you choose SmartSuite 97, you get the CD-ROM version. Installing manually by diskettes will take you approximately the time it takes to paint two garages.
Also, do not buy SmartSuite if you are hoping to get by another year on anything slower than, say, a 166 megahertz Pentium machine. Like all self-respecting programs these days, SmartSuite is a chip-speed, memory and storage space hog. I tried making it work on my pokey Pentium upgrade 486; don't you try. It was an ordeal of the highest ordure. Face facts: new software requires new hardware.
Which raises the possibility that SmartSuite 97 may be the last suite I'll ever use. The world is changing, and the Web is throwing up challenges to old-line software companies like Microsoft and IBM. Deep-featured, do-everything software may a luxury few corporate customers will wnt to spring for.
My guess is that home office users, who have greate need of all these packages, will be the last to give up the office suite habit. And that SmartSuite will be in the running right up to the end.
To contact Mike Finley ...
mfinley@mfinley.com
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