Popular office suite gets a "major" upgrade
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Apparently, ClarisWorks has become an old dog, because the most recent version is not significantly different from version 4.0. That's not what Claris wants you to think though - the addition of the word "Office" to the name connotates a significant upgrade.
Make no mistake, you will see the differences the first time you launch ClarisWorks, but that's because most of the changes are cosmetic. For instance, the sliders that control the indentation have become remarkably similar to Microsoft Word's. A button bar has been added as well, a great improvement over the previous floating palettes that weren't all that useful. What's more, you now have two ways to change justification! The new button bar also lets you change the typeface, size, color, and style. Of course, ClarisWorks 5.0 retains the column, line spacing, and justification controls built into the document window from previous versions. After all, if you take away the dog's old tricks, what will he have left?
One significant addition that will be very useful to some people is the Equation Editor. This allows you to create complex mathematical equations and import them directly into ClarisWorks. The program is remarkably simple and intuitive, and it allows you to create even the most complex equations, with nested roots over fraction bars, and anything else you can imagine. Now, if only it could solve equations for a variable.
The spreadsheet module of ClarisWorks didn't have any significant changes. It is still extremely easy to use, but its simplicity also limits what you can do with it. It doesn't come near to the power of dedicated spreadsheets and statistics programs like Excel. The database module is also very similar to previous versions. It is not as powerful as FileMaker Pro, but the for the average home user, it is perfectly suitable for most any purpose, like storing anything from addresses to recipes. For the home business user, it can be used to create form letters quickly and easily after you establish a database of recipients.
As you can probably infer from the direction this review is going in, the paint and draw modules of ClarisWorks are remarkably similar to previous versions. The only noticeable change is the addition of color patterns in both modules. Some of them could be useful, but you'd have to think long and hard before you come up for a use for the duck's head and the cherry. The only things I've found the draw module useful for is making charts and pasting portions of pictures that I've copied out of SimpleText to be printed. I haven't found the paint module to be useful at all, but young children seem to get a kick out of it.
There are a few minor changes throughout ClarisWorks as a whole. First there is the button bar which was already mentioned. It changes to reflect the portion of ClarisWorks you are working in, so you don't have the same tools in database as you have in painting. ClarisWorks 5.0 has been made to take advantages of some changes in OS 8. Nested menus no longer have a white portion to the right of the arrow when you are using the new "platinum" appearance. When you move the cursor over a highlighted portion of text, the cursor changes to let you know you can move the text by dragging it. Unfortunately, the application does not support OS 8's contextual menus. These would be nice for choosing the font and style of a text block. Some new clip art libraries have also been added, and they are really worth looking into. These libraries are a sort of hidden feature in ClarisWorks that few people actually use, but some of the graphics could be useful to you.
One other "feature" that Claris is promoting is the low system requirements you need for ClarisWorks. Not only is the 4.7 MB RAM requirement far lower than Microsoft Word alone, Claris also claims it takes up half the disk space that other office suites use. One can only guess what multi-billion dollar corporation's office suite they're talking about.
If you are happy with ClarisWorks 4.0, there is really no reason for you to upgrade to 5.0 unless you're one of those people who has to have the latest version, no matter what. It doesn't offer any significant changes that you can't do without, so you would be spending money that could be better spent elsewhere (such as a dedicated spreadsheet program for those of you who use Claris Works 4.0's built in one). That's not to say ClarisWorks isn't a good program - if you don't already use it, I definitely recommend getting it, because it really is a valuable tool, but if you already have it, I don't recommend upgrading.
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 SRP: $99.99; Upgrade: $49.99 |