Now you have a third choice between expensive 'office' suites and cheap but under-featured 'works' packages. Ability Office 2000 admirably fills the gap in the market with well-featured and professional-quality programs, all for £50.

The suite comprises a word processor called Write and two other key applications unimaginatively labelled Spreadsheet and Database. Write is rather like Microsoft Word but with all the bits that you never got around to using shaved off. For everyday jobs such as correspondence and mail-merges, reports and other visually attractive business documents, it's ideal. Our only problem is that you can't create tables in Write except by embedding Spreadsheet ranges.

Spreadsheet is less powerful than the likes of Microsoft Excel, but you'd have to be building pretty complex mathematical systems to spot the difference. For the rest of us, it provides more than you need for financial accounting, what-if scenarios and the like. Named ranges can be inserted into Write documents and updated dynamically. Ability Database is likewise deceptively powerful. It's a relational database for a start, and you can create VBScript macros and even edit SQL commands within the program.

Also included are two graphics packages, Draw and Photopaint. The former is a pretty basic vector drawing utility, but Photopaint is much more welcome. In fact, it's a full multi-layered bitmap editing application with tools reminiscent of Paint Shop Pro and even more gradient colour options than Adobe Photoshop.

Best of all, this latest version of Ability Office lets you import and export straight to Microsoft Office 2000 document formats. All that's missing is a presentation graphics package, aside from the other limitation that Ability Office's Internet-related features are limited to a 'send to Exchange' command. But even so, we love the suite for being so seriously Microsoft Office-like for the kind of money you'd fork out for shareware.

Company: Ability

Contact: 020 7231 1004

Company: Microsoft

Contact: 0870 601 0100

Company: OpenOffice.org

Website: http://OpenOffice.org

Company: Lotus

Contact: 0870 6006 123

Company: Sun

Contact: 020 7628 3000

Company: Corel

Contact: 0800 973189

Company: Corel

Contact: 01628 589800

Tags: microsoftoffice microsoft wordperfect microsoft excel openoffice.org corel wordperfect office oracle open office office suite