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.

ThinkFree works without a hitch. It's responsive, works perfectly saving new documents and importing those created in Office 2003. Its surprisingly well-rounded feature compatibility makes it the suite of choice for online work

It's free, available anywhere and it's quick in use, but Ajax13's ajaxWrite leaves a lot to be desired.

The trade-off for Jarte's small footprint and shallow learning curve is a dearth of features. A paid-for version, Jarte Plus, offers more, such as automatic spelling correction, automatic outlines, the ability to save clipboard cuttings for future use and support for independent user profiles, which Jarte calls "personalities".

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.

Minor irritations aside, we think people who use their PC for business -- and who are looking for a real productivity-suite upgrade -- might very well find what they need in Corel WordPerfect Office X3.

Users comfortable with Microsoft Office may find it takes time to get used to Apple iWork '08. Advanced Word and Excel users, especially those who rely on specialised features and functions, will probably find Apple Pages '08 and Apple Numbers '08 to be limited. If you do rely on specific functions in Microsoft Excel or features in any of the Microsoft Office applications that are even slightly outside the more general types of usage, you will probably want to download the Apple iWork '08 30-day trial to ensure that the tools you need are there before buying. And, to be sure, the process of having to export files when interacting with Microsoft Office users could get old quickly if you have to do that regularly. But overall, Apple iWork '08 is beautifully designed -- a compelling product and great value for consumers and small business alike. It brings tons of innovation over previous versions of Apple iWork as well as many office suites on the market. And it turns typical office tasks and documents into creative outlets. That it offers all that it does for $99 is, frankly, hard to believe.

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.

Significant revamp provides more applications and many design improvements, though these take time to learn. If you'd like to get the most out of Office applications, this upgrade can help you do it.

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.

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.

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.