Meets the needs of most PC users, at a bargain price.

Modest upgrade to a solid suite offers better (but not flawless) Microsoft Office compatibility.

Home PC users looking for a low-cost alternative to Microsoft Office will find Works Suite 2006 a capable option, and its extras would make it a bargain at twice the price.

There's plenty of work still to do on Office 12.0, and many features won't be finished until Beta 2.0. Outlook takes a big leap forward, and there are as many major advances to benefit home users as features aimed at big companies. The new interface will probably alienate some users, although we predict it's going to be popular in the longer term; once you're used to it you quickly start getting more done. And that's the real reason for productivity software in the first place.

OpenOffice.org isn’t as refined as MS Office, but it’s certainly better value for money

Google Docs' presentation tool is, ultimately, a rough draft that thoroughly deserves the beta label. Google reportedly plans to beef up the editing tools, eventually turning Google Docs into a richer environment. Judging from the slow-but-steady progress of Google Docs' word processor and spreadsheet, the presentation features probably won't acquire PowerPoint-crushing sophistication any time soon. That said, Google Docs should become only more useful over the coming months and, in the meantime, a lot of people are going to find it very useful indeed.

Perhaps we've been spoiled. There are so many great Web services solutions out there -- most of them free like Microsoft Office Live Workspaces -- that our expectations keep getting nudged higher and higher. And with Live Documents just around the corner, it's hard to get excited about a technically inferior solution that's late to the party.

For light users with even a passing knowledge of Microsoft Office, Ashampoo Office 2008 will be a decent buy that's familiar and easy to use (just as well, given the lack of documentation). In our tests we encountered no compatibility issues. But although $103 is a lot less than MS Office 2007's retail price of $690, similar products such as Star Office 8.0 ($69.95) are much less still. And if you're in the market for an inexpensive, stripped down productivity suite, OpenOffice.org and Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations are so cheap they're, well, free.

For anyone who wants to revise documents, spreadsheets or presentations on the go, without needing to carry a laptop, Quickoffice Premier 5.0 could be just the ticket, while anyone frustrated with the (very!) basic Nokia S60 diary should take a look at the same publisher's Quickcalendar.