Office XP Part I
The All new Office Suite From Microsoft

With Office XP soon-to-be-launched it looks like Microsoft will now allow it's users to decide what they need and what they want to in an office suite. This means a lot of new conveniences and some inconveniences. But the most significant change, to be welcomed by most users are those irritating automation features carried over from previous office versions can now be disabled.

OfficeXP has Web integration as its common theme. Every application in the suite is Web-enabled. However, while most are valuable to users, some seem to be designed just to increase traffic to Microsoft's Web properties.

Features that can be disabled include the automatic formatting that inserted headlines where you didn't want them or insisted on changing anything with an "@" sign in it. Bugs like the Web site publishing feature that would upload a whole site instead of a single, changed page too have been resolved. Best of all, Clippy, the animated-paper clip help system is switched off by default.

Overall, the suite now has a new soft, more pastel-coloured interface. There are Task Panes on the right-hand side of each application window. These offer lists of recently used files, plus disk and Web searches, relevant links and access to formatting features.

New Smart Tag icons offer help and options when a user seem to start doing complex tasks. They also activate when Office applies an automated formatting change like superscripting ordinals. You can also click the tag (press Shift-Alt-F10) to choose possible actions for the text or graphic under the cursor.

Microsoft is also introducing handwriting and speech recognition features. These high-tech additions are not completely bug-free. This feature is partucularly targeted at users who can't use the keyboard for medical reasons. The Lerhout & Hauspie engine used for speech recognition had trouble with my Indian accent. Hand-writing feature is rather exciting as one no longer needs to use a keyboard. Just switch to a pen and tablet.

The best of these new features is the built-in text scan and conversion. This directly acquires text from an attached scanner and includes it into a document.

The big downside, especially for those users who prefer to use but not pay, is the online validation system. The suite requires a user to validate the supplied key while connected to the Internet or by calling Microsoft Customer Support (applicable in US only). Copies are simply disabled.

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