This article reviews a low-cost office suite which provides an alternative to the market leader Microsoft Office. This alternative is Kingsoft Office, from the Australian arm of a Chinese IT company. It focuses on the core components of word processor, spreadsheet and presentation graphics.
Introduction
The latest version of Microsoft Office has not been universally welcomed. This has created a market for alternative solutions. Most of these look uncannily like the previous incarnation of Microsoft Office (Office 2003). In this article, we shall review an alternative proprietary Office suite solution.
Is this suite from a reliable source of software?
Kingsoft is an IT Chinese company, which was established nearly thirty years ago. This software is distributed to the international market by the Australian arm of the company. The company has previously produced a well-reviewed security product. The office suite may be downloaded at http://www.kingsoftresearch.com/kso/download.aspx.
Licensing arrangements
This is a proprietary product which is available under a variety of licensing arrangements. There is also a simpler free version (Kingsoft Office 2007) which will shortly be made available for free personal non-commercial use. The commercial version is the subject of this review. It is available as a free trial for 100 days, after which the user must either settle for the free version or purchase a licence for the full professional version. For a single user, this costs $69.95 US, with discounts for site licences available by quotation.
Functionality and philosophy
Kingsoft Office is clearly offered as an antidote the perceived over-complexity of the latest Microsoft Office release. It focuses on the core components of word processor, spreadsheet and presentation graphics. The look and feel is uncannily like Office 2003, and this is offered as an advantage to business who could switch to Kingsoft Office without any need for re-training. Certainly, it looks more like Office 2003 than Open Office in either v2 or v3 guise. The company also suggest that for commercial customers, support, offered as an integral part of the commercial licence is superior to that available for an open source product such as Open Office.
The lean philosophy works well in terms of speed. The Writer application opened a 10Mb book manuscript .doc file rapidly and reliably. The option to use Microsoft file formats as default again makes it a very simple switch from Office 2003.
The lean philosophy inevitably means that some features are missing. These will be explored in later articles in this series which look at the components in more detail. However, direct pdf production across the suite is a strong feature, and probably the most important missing from Word 2003.
Conclusion
This office suite provides an attractive alternative for many users who find the latest version of Microsoft Office overly complex and more difficult to use than its predecessor.
The overall suite offers fewer components than its open source and Microsoft rivals: there is no database, email or organizer application, but the core functionality is here.
Although not free in its full version, it is low cost and the transition from Word 2003 is likely to be very painless. For a small business, the savings in transition costs may dwarf the licensing cost and the promise of good quality support. Its biggest problem with larger companies is "No one ever gets sacked for buying IBM" syndrome. These days, for IBM read Microsoft.
Kingsoft Office
This seriesreviews a low-cost office suite which provides an alternative to the market leader Microsoft Office. This alternative is Kingsoft Office, from the Australian arm of a Chinese IT company. It focuses on the core components of word processor, spreadsheet and presentation graphics.