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| Microsoft MS Office Visio Standard 2003 Complete package |
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| Media : CD-ROM, License Type : Complete package, License Qty : 1 user, Microsoft Windows XP or later, Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3 or later, Software Type : Office applications - prob¯cts / process |
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Lowest Price: $183.98 at ![]() VioSoftware |
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Average Overall Rating:
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3 Ratings ,7 Reviews |
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-- Activehome Expert, Activehome  1 out of 1 found this reivew helpful |
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| Microsoft Office's high price tag has always made it difficult for us to recommend it, especially when for the majority of home users, a lot of the features and applications will go unused. For the latest version of the application, Office 2003, Microsoft has changed the available versions of the software to appeal to a range of different users. For home users, we have the Standard Edition (Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint), which we'll concentrate on in this review. It's still fairly expensive - a boxed version costs £326, but it's also available in a Student and Teacher version, which, provided you have children in the education system or are a teacher, costs just £110. This version can also be installed on two PCs in one house, which effectively brings the price in line with products like Ability Office. Enough of the pricing structure though, and on to new features within the products. First is the research pane, which gives access to a variety of off- and online resources including a dictionary, thesaurus and Encarta online. Just type a keyword into the search box to get a list of related articles and definitions. It sounds useful but has several problems, the biggest of which is that a lot of the links to online articles, such as Encarta, end up at websites requesting payment. A few more free articles would make this a more useful tool. Word is very similar to previous versions. The main change here is the Reading View. It hides unnecessary toolbars and makes documents easier to read, especially on a notebook PC. It's a nice feature for working with large documents but not worth upgrading for. In Excel and PowerPoint, the major changes are aimed at business users, so we have to say it's not worth the upgrade if you have a previous version of these applications. Where you will really notice the difference is with Outlook, which has received a major overhaul. First, the look of the application has been completely transformed. Email folders run down the left-hand pane, a middle pane shows a folder's contents, while the right-hand pane displays emails in an easy-to-read format. You can still double-click on an email to view it but there's really little point with the new features. Dive under the new interface and the changes are more than just cosmetic. Of particular interest is the junk mail filter, which replaces the old rules system in previous versions. It 'reads' incoming email and uses new technology to work out if it's spam or not. Rules can be put on top of this to always accept or reject email from given senders. So, is Office 2003 worth buying? For most people, we would say no. It's still an expensive product and most of the changes in the applications, bar Outlook, are aimed at the business user. If you already have a version of Office there's very little incentive to stick your hand in your pocket. Contact: Microsoft 0870 601 0100 www.microsoft.com/uk Price Details: Standard Edition upgrade - £185 Student and Teacher version - £110 Full version - £326 Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below: del.icio.us Digg this reddit! Permalink for this story | View trackbacks to this story Trackback URL: http://www.activehome.co.uk/actions/trackback/2012631 ...
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-- Activehome Expert, Activehome  0 out of 0 found this reivew helpful |
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| Microsoft Office's high price tag has always made it difficult for us to recommend it, especially when for the majority of home users, a lot of the features and applications will go unused. For the latest version of the application, Office 2003, Micr ...
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-- Networkitweek Expert, Networkitweek  0 out of 0 found this reivew helpful |
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| It's nearly a year since we first looked at the beta version of Office 2003 and, by the time you read this, the final product will be on the shelves of your local computer store. Although we were working with unboxed CDs still warm from the press, what we saw is what you'll get. Installation As with previous versions, you can install the various components to disk, install for 'first-time use' (ie the relevant files will be copied the first time a component or feature is called upon), or not install at all. This last option is useful, for example when you never want to see the tabs and lists of the bundled templates and wizards. A further option, which rather negates the space-saving gained by the 'first-time use' option, is that you can keep the installation files on disk. These files are used for Office maintenance and updates without having to use the CD. The default options of Office Pro - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access - took up 509MB, plus an optional 227MB of installation files. This is small change by today's hard disk sizes but an order of magnitude away from around 200MB of the last Office version we reviewed. And this time around you'll need Windows 2000 SP3 or Windows XP to run Office 2003: it won't run on any earlier versions. As with Office XP you must activate the product either over the Internet or by phone. Using the former method this took just a few seconds and required no user input beyond a mouseclick. Although we elected to keep our previous version of Office XP (apart from Outlook, which must be upgraded) the installation made an excellent job of preserving the existing settings and customisation. New look Although there are no radical surprises in the menus and toolbars, the look of these is considerably changed. Instead of the flat, austere look of Office XP and 2000, the toolbars and menu sidebars are almost tactile, with voluptuous cylindrical curves. Buttons and menu items glow pale orange when the mouse is hovered over them and a deeper orange when pushed in. Apart from the fun factor this makes it a lot easier to see, for example, whether you have bold or rightaligned text selected. Leaving the cosmetic for the technical, the major selling point of Office 2003 can be summarised in three letters - XML. Like HTML this is a mark-up language consisting of tags, but whereas HTML tags are primarily concerned with appearance, such as , XML tags can address content and be defined according to a schema. So, a group of wine traders can define a tag that indicates that the tagged data contains information relating to wine from that region. Furthermore, documents and other data saved in XML format can be searched by other data-processing engines on the basis of data types rather than just plain words. The advantages are obvious - it's like finding a flight using a dedicated search engine such as Expedia compared to typing 'flight+gatwick+rome+tuesday' into Google. XML can also be used via web services to do things such as enable an existing ordering software system to talk to a stock-control program either in the same, or across different organisations. Research The next new feature is the Research task pane. This is all rather sparse until you activate Office, whereupon it becomes populated with a variety of offand online sources. The former includes the local thesaurus and dictionaries, and the latter includes Microsoft Encarta, Elibrary, Factiva, and Gale Company Profiles. When you perform a search, the Research pane gets populated with short extracts from the results found, grouped under each source with links to the main article. Although this is an impressive presentation of XML at work, there is rather less to this than meets the eye. Many of the links we tried to Encarta articles, for example, ended in a 'pay to join' screen, although searching Encarta directly from a browser produced the full article for free. Links to Elibrary and Factiva articles also ended at a pay screen, even though many Chunkier toolbars and menus make it easier to see what you're doing citations in the latter were from web pages at the BBC, Observer or Times and could be freely accessed from those sites. Although you can customise the Research services, you can't just add a site of your choice, such as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) or Google (www.google.com). This is a shame, and a cynic would conclude that this feature is provided not to enrich the knowledge of the user but the coffers of Microsoft's Office marketplace partners. Although unavailable at the time of writing, a deal with Amazon has been announced and a free download will enable users to search Amazon from the Research pane. It will allow copying of book details and cover art into documents, or purchases to be made without having to leave the confines of Office. Rather better is the translation service provided byWorldlingo. We were able to translate a 3,000-word document into French in a matter of seconds - it returned in an IE window. Apart from the customary howlers of machine translation, it didn't do a bad job, although someone needs to tell it that URLs ending in .co.uk should not become .co.r-u in French. There are many more languages on offer including Greek, Russian and Chinese. Staying with the Task Pane, inWord, Excel and Powerpoint we have the Shared Workspace pane. This is designed for collaboration, and within its tabs team members can share and update documents, set tasks, schedule meetings and share links to external resources. Rights You've long been able to password-protect documents and spreadsheets, either from opened at all or being edited, but Microsoft has taken this a step further with what is grandly named Information Rights Management. This tool, which is only available in the Professional edition or standalone applications, gives the author or administrator of a document the ability to restrict access on a per-user basis, as well as set restrictions on formatting and/or editing all or parts of a document. To implement this to its full extent, your organisation needs a rights management server but, should it not have one, you can sign up for a free trial with Microsoft using a .Net passport. Word In addition to the standard Normal, Print Layout, Web and Outline views, Word has a new contender - Reading View. Primarily intended for laptop or tablet users, this isn?t quite as much of a self-parody as it sounds. It hides unnecessary toolbars; optionally displays the document map or the new page thumbnails; ignores the line-wrapping layout and shows the document on a paper-like background. You can still edit text, use the mark-up tools, and zoom to whatever level you find most comfortable - the line wrap changes to suit. As mentioned earlier, you can save documents in XML format. If you are using the Professional edition of Office (or a standalone copy of Word 2003), you can attach an XML schema to any document from the Templates and Add-ins dialogue. Unlike the Excel team, Word?s developers have never quite mastered the challenge of arranging two documents side-by-side in the same parent Window. They abandoned the quest in Office 2000, presenting every document as if it was running in a separate instance of the program and, although it?s possible in Office XP, it involves a lot of manual resizing. Word 2003 is somewhat better, with a 'Compare side-by-side' command. Our other pet peeve - the sheer awfulness of the file search interface - stays unimproved and it still takes 10 mouse clicks to drill down to a typical third-level target folder.` Excel Apart from the common ground of XML, Rights Management and Shared Workspace, Excel users have a few more treats. Smart Documents work like supercharged templates and can be used in an expenses claim, for example, to fill in form fields that it 'knows' about, such as your name and department and, when you've filled in the details, send itself to your boss. There's improved list functionality that integrates with the shared workspace; improvement to statistical functions such as CRITBINOM and HYPGEOMDIST for those who appreciate such things; and as with Word, the option to view workbooks side by side. Powerpoint Powerpoint boasts a long-awaited update to the standalone viewer, which runs on Windows 98 or later. There?s a CD packager that works in conjunction with the Windows XP burner or with third-party software on Windows 2000. A new slideshow toolbar features tools for pen annotation and highlighting, as well as navigation buttons. Finally, users have the same Information Rights Management and Shared Workspace features seen in Word and Excel. Access Access sees a number of minor improvements including the enabling of the Smart Tags seen in Word and Excel XP. You can view information on dependencies between database objects, both upwards and downwards. There's automatic error checking in forms and reports, for things such as two controls using the same keyboard shortcut. There's also automatic propagation of field properties, so when you modify the properties of an inherited field, controls bound to that field can be updated accordingly. There?s also a useful backup feature that lets you save a 'justin- case' version of a database before making major changes. Outlook Outlook is definitely the pampered child of the family in terms of care and attention. First, it has had a complete visual makeover, as our screenshot (right) shows. When reading mail, for instance, the screen is split into three columns. On the left the Navigation pane shows a list of mail folders, as well as navigation buttons to go to other parts of Outlook. The central pane shows a list of items in the current folder and on the right is a reading pane, which replaces the former preview pane. It not only shows more text but, like Word's Reading Layout view, does so with an emphasis on readability. You can still double-click an item to display it in a separate window, but you may well find you never need to. Outlook's enhancements are more than cosmetic. There's an option to block external content in messages. This will stop your PC 'phoning home' to access a graphic stored on the sender's server, for example. Although this can be enough of a nuisance in its own right, the blocking also deals with another undesirable - the web bug or beacon. These are tiny graphics which send a request to the sender's server which can be logged. They can be used to return information such as the IP address of the computer, the time and duration of the reading and other information that you may well consider is none of the sender's business. Another very welcome improvement is a junk email filter which uses technology developed by Microsoft Research to evaluate whether a message should be treated as junk spam. Such messages aren't deleted but moved to their own folder and you can add rules to consign (or rescue) messages on a per-sender basis. Other enhancements include 'Quick Flags' - if you don't have time to answer an important email right away, quick flagging it will put it in a 'For follow-up' folder. Threading is improved with an 'Arrange By Conversation' option; you can view calendars side-by-side; extract messages to 'Search Folders' on a variety of criteria, and a load more things we just don't have space to tell you about. The deals The Standard and Student/Teacher editions comprise Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint. The Small Business edition adds Publisher and the Outlook Business Contacts Manager, and the Professional edition adds Access to the mix, as well as additional support for Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Information Rights Management (IRM). The Professional Enterprise edition, only available for volume licensing, also includes Infopath, which is a tool for designing and filling out forms. As with Office XP the web-design application, Office Frontpage, is a separate purchase, as is the rather fine Tablet/PDA/PC note-taking and sketching application, Onenote. Other buy-alone members of the Office System family include Visio 2003 for diagrams and Project 2003 for project management. Pricing As is customary, Microsoft was unable to confirm recommended UK prices. However, at the time of writing www.amazon.co.uk was offering the following prices. Note that all upgrades require Office 97 or later (any edition) or Works 6 or later. All prices include VAT at 17.5 per cent: Student and Teacher version £109.99 (requires proof of eligibility). Standard Edition - upgrade £184.99, full £326.49. Small Business Edition - upgrade £215.99, full £350.99. Professional Edition - upgrade £250.99, full £397.99. I f you have a copy of Office XP purchased between 14 August 2003 and 30 November 2003 then you can upgrade to the equivalent 2003 edition for just £10. In addition, for another £35 you can jump from Office XP Standard to Office 2003 Small Business edition. Should you upgrade? Microsoft derives nearly 90 per cent of its Office revenue from corporates and other large organisations. So it is not surprising that the main improvements in this version of Office - XML, Information Rights Management and Document Workspaces - are designed to be 'must haves' at this level. For the rest of us who aren't going to be rushing to define our own XML schemas or aren't too concerned with restricting the contents of our documents, then the pickings are slimmer. Outlook, however, is a notable exception - the improvements here are considerable, and should be welcomed by all end users. Unfortunately though, the other main new feature - the Research pane - is a great disappointment as it currently stands. It could be a very useful and versatile tool, but its present implementation does little more than turn Office into adware. Contact: Microsoft 0870 601 0100 www.microsoft.com/uk Systems Requirements: LI>Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3,Windows XP Intel Pentium III 233MHz 128MB of Ram 260MB of hard disk space Permalink Comments Forward Print digg del.icio.us reddit! 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| -- Vnunet Expert, Vnunet 0 out of 0 found this reivew helpful |
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| It's nearly a year since we first looked at the beta version of Office 2003 and, by the time you read this, the final product will be on the shelves of your local computer store. Although we were working with unboxed CDs still warm from the press, wh ...
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| -- Activehome Expert, Activehome 0 out of 0 found this reivew helpful |
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| Microsoft's all-purpose diagramming tool has improved ease of use and stronger developer features in this new release. Visio is part of what Microsoft now calls the Office System. Standard word processing and spreadsheet applications have become commodity items, so Microsoft's rebranding puts the emphasis on other aspects such as team features, programmability and interoperability through XML. Visio is no exception. Having said that, a lot of effort has gone into enhancing the user interface in small but helpful ways, making it a worthwhile upgrade for any Visio user. A Visio document mainly consists of shapes and connectors. Shapes are typically dragged from a palette called the Shapes Window, labelled, positioned and resized as required, and then connected to other shapes to show their relationships or their part in a flow of actions. A Visio shape is more than just a drawing object. Well-designed shapes are intelligent, and can only be modified in ways that make sense for what they represent. Shapes can have custom properties and custom actions. For example, a Staircase shape in a building plan has a Number of Treads property and a Hide Handrails action. In Visio 2003, shapes are easier to manipulate. As an illustration, in previous versions you rotated a shape by selecting a shape, then a rotation tool, and finally rotating the shape with the mouse. Shapes in Visio 2003 have a rotation handle, so you can select and rotate in one quick operation. Other enhancements include support for digital ink on a Tablet PC and revamped online help integrated with the Task Pane. Team support is much improved in this version. A new review mode lets team members annotate diagrams and propose changes. You can also use a Sharepoint server to store drawings for team availability with features such as change notification. Shapes are complex, and the usefulness of Visio depends largely on the supplied templates. Each template comes with its own set of shapes and documentation on how to use them. The templates range from simple flow charts to more specialised options like electrical diagrams, engineering drawings and network diagrams. Visio is a mature product, and there are hundreds of templates available. Most are familiar from previous versions, although many have new and enhanced shapes. If you do need to create shapes, the Visio SDK includes a new Shape Studio tool, although we haven't seen this yet. This time round, Microsoft has tried to give Visio a greater appeal to business rather than technical users, so there are new business process templates for diagramming things like workflow, audits, SAP systems and fault-finding processes. There's also a new geographical mapping template, which lets you put together good-looking maps and routes. Web developers will be interested in the website template, which lets you generate a website map automatically simply by specifying an URL. In the beta under test, we found the results awkward to use and over-pessimistic with regard to broken links, but nevertheless the range of website shapes are valuable for designing a site outline, or for creating simplified diagrams that communicate a design to others. One of the most interesting uses of Visio is as a component in a custom solution. Several new features make it more attractive to developers. For a start, there is now a macro recorder. This is doubly useful, first for recording macros, and second as a way of generating code that shows how to program Visio's elaborate object model. The macro recorder does Visual Basic for Applications, but as with other Office System applications you can also write code in the .Net languages. Next, there is a new Visio ActiveX control that lets you embed and control Visio drawings within other applications, such as those created in Visual Basic or C#. Thirdly, database integration lets you hook up diagrams to dynamic data, or extract data from a Visio diagram. Finally, XML support lets you analyse Visio diagrams with XML tools, or hook into XML web services for dynamic drawings. Visio XML is unfortunately rather complex, but still easier to work with than a binary format. Contact: Microsoft www.microsoft.com/office/visio System Requirements: Windows 2000 or XP Pentium III or higher 64MB of Ram 245MB of free hard disk space Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below: del.icio.us Digg this reddit! Permalink for this story | View trackbacks to this story Trackback URL: http://www.activehome.co.uk/actions/trackback/2043540 ...
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| Microsoft MS Office Visio Standard 2003 Complete package |
| $183.98 - $360.00 |
| from 4 stores |
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| Microsoft MS Office Visio Standard 2003 Complete package Full Description |
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Microsoft Office Visio 2003 gives you the power to visualize and communicate ideas, information, and systems. You can use simple, flexible tools to easily create business and technical charts and graphs that present your ideas with dramatic impact. |
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