Corel Releases WordPerfect X3
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.