Quite simply, a must for every Mac user. Office for Mac combines the best of Windows with a few brilliant touches to ensure its transition to the other side is a smooth one.

The 2007 Office System is easily the most compelling Office upgrade seen in recent years, even if the 2007 applications do impose a more-demanding learning curve than their predecessors did.

If you need to digitise and archive documents using a scanner, create secure, extensible electronic documents, produce professional marketing documents and other publications and automate form and questionnaire creation, Acrobat 8.0 Pro will definitely suit you.

Accuracy and speed are most important, and in these areas OmniPage Professional 16.0 performs very well. However, it is the inclusion of so many features - covering every aspect that advanced users may wish to consider - that makes OmniPage Professional 16.0 so appealing.

Intuit QuickBooks Pro & Payroll 2008's documentation is concise and very clear, and this really is one program that even the occasional user will be able to get to grips with when running their business. Expert users may prefer to stick with Sage, but for anyone else QuickBooks really is the most intuitive application in this field. The only negative is that, compared to MYOB, this is a touch pricey.

IBM says that the full version 1.0 of IBM Lotus Symphony will be available in the first quarter of 2008, and it will still be free of charge. That's a good thing, as the zero price point is Lotus Symphony's best calling card. It's an efficient program with a handsome interface but with feature enhancements still to be made. While powerful, it certainly does not rival Office's robust capabilities -- yet.

The simplicity, interactivity, and unlimited free storage of Google Docs' presentation component will appeal to many people, but for power users it falls short. By comparison, Glide Present 2.0 has covered all the bases with a compelling Web-based offering that could emerge as a true replacement for Microsoft PowerPoint.

The small fee that appears to make StarOffice less desirable brings with it Web-based and helpdesk support, and this is one thing that could appeal to OpenOffice users. Both versions provide superb, very stable office suites that offer a challenge to Microsoft Office. In this case low-cost definitely doesn't mean sub-standard.

It's not a perfect suite. Some advanced features, such as using wild cards in a find-and-replace operation, aren't supported. Neither is conditional formatting in Sheet. Even so, if your editing needs end with the 5 per cent of Office features most of us use most often, Zoho may be all you need.

If your meeting invitees are all internal to your organisation and on the same Microsoft-based mail and calendar systems, Outlook 2007 may provide all the scheduling tools you need. But TimeBridge offers much more flexibility and time savings for people who collaborate in many environments and in various browser platforms.