General purpose tools like Excel and PowerPoint are all very well, but for some tasks a more specialised application is better. So it is with organisational charts, for example, where OrgPlus 6 from HumanConcepts is both ...

Timesheet Xpress is a single-minded application with just one aim; to record and bill for time. Not any old time, you understand, but time spent working for customers and clients by those employed in a service ...

Optical character recognition is a mature technology, and the machines it now runs on are immensely powerful compared with those used in the early days of OCR, so it's not unreasonable to expect any current program ...

Now in its fifteenth version, MYOB Accounting is a well established small business accounting package available for both Windows PCs and Apple Mac platforms. Primarily aimed at users with at least a basic knowledge of book-keeping, ...

ThinkFree Office is a suite of tools that creates a niche that, at this stage, even OpenOffice 2 can't equal. Put simply, it's a trio of applications that you can access and load through a Web ...

Viewed in a couple of years' time, this review could either look like a startling piece of foresight or something that offers predictions even Mystic Meg would struggle to put her name to. Yet is there ...

Forget woodchucks. Here's a better tongue-teasing conundrum: if a quick look at a book was a flick through, how quick would a thick hick flick through a quick book? The answer? Quick sticks, of course, which ...

With a licence agreement of barely 100 words and a price tag of absolutely zero, it's surprising that OpenOffice hasn't enjoyed more success. Actually, scratch that; as good as the previous version was, there were unhelpful ...

Fighting head-to-head with Microsoft in the premium price office suite arena, as it has done for some time, Corel's latest suite makes it clear where its priorities lie pretty much from the start. Screaming 'Microsoft compatible' ...

Summarize is one of a number of products from Corpora aimed at helping you sift through information. If your job or hobby involves wading through a lot of text, its claim to produce 'accurate summaries of ...

There are only two desktop publishing programs designed for the masses, rather than professional graphic designers. Microsoft's Publisher is set firmly in the small business arena, while Serif tries to embrace home, business and semi-professional use ...

Works Suite 2006 comprises six products: Works 8, Word 2002, Encarta 2005, Digital Image 2006, AutoRoute Essentials 2006 and Money 2006. There are smaller extras, too, such as Pocket Streets for Pocket PC and Smartphone. Those ...

If you've ever thought of going on that Alan Sugar TV show for budding entrepreneurs, but were scared that he might chew you up and spit you out at the first barrier, then maybe it's time ...

Not all of us are dead clever. Not all of us are tri-lingual masters of the spoken word. After a few pints, some of us can barely speak the one language. Luckily, the world of the ...

WordPerfect is an intimidating title for a program. It sounds like the sort of word processor that only Shakespearian types should be using; those who can craft perfect sentences and paragraphs. As opposed to journalistic monkeys ...

At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking that Student 2006 marks an express act of generosity on the part of Microsoft. After all, for just shy of £60 it does initially seem that you ...

The bane of most medium to large companies' existence is the need to keep abreast of all the compliance demands made on it by changing legislation and improvements in business efficiency. Allied to this headache is ...

I well remember my first experiences of speech-to-text software. The long training periods with new applications teaching them to recognise my voice, which because it was so different from an American voice seemed to present an ...

We'll make no secret of the fact that we like Intuit's QuickBooks software. We've used it for running our own accounts in the past and we were impressed by the enhancements implemented in recent incarnations of ...

There's an old adage that runs along the lines of never judging a book by its cover. Usually, it refers to something that looks an awful lot better than it actually is. In this case, quite ...