Suite Survivors

Cost is another factor: All of Office's competitors undercut its price tag. Then there's freedom of choice--some users simply prefer a product that doesn't say "Microsoft" on the box.

Here are our brief appraisals of the other major suites:

Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.6

The good: Covers all the suite basics well enough that current users have little reason to switch. Its Organizer personal information manager remains simple, fun, and highly useful; the unique FastSite application automatically turns documents into basic Web pages.

The bad: More than any other major suite, this one is looking long in the tooth--it hasn't undergone a sweeping overhaul since 1998.

The future: Fuzzy. Lotus says a modest update with better support for Microsoft files and other minor tweaks will appear by year's end. But will SmartSuite ever see another major upgrade? Lotus is noncommittal.

List price: $173 upgrade, $437 full

Lotus.com

Corel WordPerfect Office 2002

The good: A solid suite that just received a significant upgrade. WordPerfect is a terrific word processor, especially for long and complex documents, and the suite's Professional edition sports better speech recognition than Office XP.

The bad: Casual users will probably find Corel's WordPerfect Office slightly less intuitive than Microsoft's Office. It's also less feature-rich in some areas, such as built-in drawing tools. And its import filters for Microsoft file formats tend to strip out fancy formatting.

The future: Corel says an upgrade to WordPerfect Family Pack--its home-oriented productivity suite--is in the works.

List price: $159 to $499, depending on features

Officecommunity.com

Sun StarOffice 5.2

The good: A jaw-dropping software bargain--it's a free download ($40 shrink-wrapped). Very full-featured, with strong graphics capabilities; handles Microsoft Office files surprisingly well.

The bad: Price aside, this isn't the world's friendliest suite. Its learning curve can be steep, and its all-in-one approach--it's one great big program--results in a cluttered app that bogs down underpowered PCs.

The future: Version 6.0 is due sometime in 2001. Sun is cagey about details, but says the upgrade will demand less in the way of system resources.

List price: Free for download, $40 shrink-wrapped

Sun.com/staroffice