RSSCorel Releases WordPerfect X3
By Nate Mook | Published January 17, 2006, 12:51 PM
Corel on Tuesday announced the availability of WordPerfect Office X3, the popular alternative desktop productivity suite. The newest version includes continued enhancements to its Microsoft Office compatibility, and the company claims the client is the first to natively import and export PDF files.
Notably missing from this release is any OpenDocument Format support, which Corel helped spearhead. However, the company told BetaNews that its target with this release was to focus on a open format that is already widely used: PDF.
Other new features include the addition of WordPerfect Mail into the suite, as well as new online resources, and the ability to eliminate hidden metadata.
WordPerfect is the world's leading Microsoft alternative, Richard Carriere, Corel's general manager for Office Productivity told BetaNews. "Every day there are 20,000 new people using WordPerfect."
The suite's growth can be measured in a study from NPD Group. The research firm found that Corel's share of non-Office customers rose from 50 percent two years ago to nearly 95 percent today. Carriere also said the company has seen some evidence that dissatisfied Office customers are also making the switch.
The Corel WordPerfect X3 Standard suite includes: WordPerfect for word processing; Quattro Pro, the company's spreadsheet application; media presentation software Presentations; WordPerfect Mail; and graphics program Presentations Graphics.
The Home Edition includes WordPerfect and Quattro Pro, but also more consumer-based applications such as Corel Photo Album 6, Pinnacle Studio SE, Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD LE v8, Norton Internet Security 2006, and two template packs for WordPerfect.
In talking to BetaNews, Carriere focused on the client's new PDF capabilities, emphasizing WordPerfect's firsts in allowing the native import and export of files. With importation, "you don't have all the clunkiness of modifying a file line by line as you do with Acrobat," he said.
However, he also stressed that people would not be able to use the client to break into protected PDFs. "If a PDF is password protected, we will respect that," Carriere said. "However, there is a false sense of security with PDF. People can still edit these files with applications other than ours."
For those making the switch to Corel's suite from other applications, the company has included a tool called the Workspace Manager. Carriere explained that when you first run the client, it will ask you how you want to run the program, and the user interface would change appropriately.
"It changes the UI to that of any Microsoft Office or other software product," he added, saying it would also default to saving the file in the format of that program.
Finally, he touched on compatibility with Windows Vista, saying the product worked with any build of the next-generation operating system that they've seen so far. Also, for the foreseeable future, Corel does not plan to release a version of the client for Mac OS X.
The Home Edition is available immediately for $79.99 USD and the Standard Edition at $159.99 USD.
The Student and Teacher Edition, which includes WordPerfect X3, Quattro Pro X3, Presentations X3 and the relational database Paradox will retail for $99.99 USD. A Professional Edition that adds Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications, network deployment, macro and VBA programming guides, and the WordPerfect SDK is available for $259.99 USD.
I didn't know they still made it. I haven't seen a wordperfect doc in years.
Who would buy this? And why?
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|It's a great MS alternative, transfers/converts back 'n forth between a gazillion formats, way cheaper for upgrade version if posessing any competitor's version, 30 day free & full trial:
http://www.corel.com/ser...Corel3/Downloads/Trials
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|I would, I prefer Wordperfect over office due to it being a superior product.
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|My question is... Who would use MS Word if they were not forced to? WordPerfect is superior and does not force you to do things the way someone in Redmond thinks you should do it.
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|I find Wordperfect 12 much easier to use than Word and always use it, although I have both programs. I always export documents in Word format because of the pathetic import facilities of Word. The fact that documents arrive in Word format doesn't mean that everybody is using Word!
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|I think the reason it's named "X3" is that their creative suite is now on version 13. Thus "X" represents 10, plus the three. On the web site there is an announcement of Graphics Suite X3.
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|There's also Paintshop Pro X, which is actually Paintshop Pro 10.
Paintshop Pro 9 was the last version made the now sadly departed JASC.
Nice to see Corel has delved back to CorelDraw 3 to dig up that old chameleon graphic. I preferred the graphic of the miserable-looking babe they used to have. It reminded me of an ex of mine - the babe not the cold-blooded reptile. But now I come to think of it...
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|You had an "ex" who looked like Hedy Lamarr? Dude, you've got to watch her films — she was a X on a scale of 10.
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|Oops! I never knew that's who she was!
I am embarrassed AND I've somehow managed to complement my miserable ex in the process :-/
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|I have no interest in this product but I think it's really sad that so many people in the tech community feel it's necessary to categorize everything as being "killer" or "dead." Folks, pie charts can have lots of slices, and so can the office suite market. Not every coffee shop needs to compete with Starbucks. Sometimes, it's good enough to be successful in the market area or segment that you target.
Granted, the numbers quoted in this article are surely inflated by the nagware versions which are commonly preloaded on Dell Dimension and other home/consumer-class machines. However, it's still obvious that WordPerfect has a large share of the non-Office user base. That's pretty respectative business and a ton of software companies would surely trade places with Corel if they could.
rijp jumps to the conclusion that WP must be dead because he hasn't seen an attachment in WP format for years. If you had read the article, you would know that WP can be configured to save in Word format by default, and that's what most WP users have been doing for years already.
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|Between Office 2003 for serious users to the free OpenOffice suite, there's is really no place for WordPerfect anymore. Does anyone actually still use this? The last version I had was WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS on my 286. They seriously need to give up; even if they released it for free I doubt it would get much use.
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|You've missed 8 WP upgrades, and the Windows version altogether. You have no idea what you are missing.
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|I guess they'll still sell to law firms who use WordPerfect for its legal formatting capabilities. But is it really any better than OpenOffice? Even with all its issues and baggage, MS Office is still the best.
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|Word Perfect is dead. Its been what, 3 years, since I have ever seen a WP attachment, and Word can open it.. so Word Perfect, its time has come and gone. They are holding to the last thread of rope dangling from a forgotten cliff.
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|Did they name it after the new X-Men movie coming out to try to get some extra hits on google? ;)
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|WordPerfect, long dead, is still dead. For $160, you get an unusable spreadsheet app, a word processor that is stuck in 1998 and still does not render PDF properly, and a new email client that is worse than most freeware programs.
One step forward; three steps back.
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|"One step forward; three steps back."
Corel has been doing that dance for years :-)
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|who cares?
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|I use WordPerfect primarily in my law practice and at home. I also have Word installed.
WordPerfect has been very strong and reliable. I am not aware of any real advantage that Word has. In fact, the 'reveal codes' feature in WOrdPerfect allows complete control of document formatting in ways Word cannot match.
WordPerfect's ability to save in Word format has improved dramatically over the years. I downloaded the new X3 trial version yesterday, and it seems good so far. Cool abilty to open up pdf files natively.
While Word is now the de facto standard, you can use WordPerfect and be very happy and have great compatibility.
Mike
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