• PC World
• »Software
• »Browsers & Add-Ons

The Best in Office Products, Graphics & Publishing

Office Essentials

Best Workgroup Monochrome Printer: Xerox DocuPrint N2125; 800/835-6100, www.xerox.com

Best Workgroup Color Printer: Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2 DeskLaser; 877/778-2687, www.qms.com

Best Personal Information Manager: Interact Commerce ACT 2000; 877/386-8083, www.actsoftware.com

Best Business Accounting Software: Peachtree Complete Accounting 7; 800/228-0068, www.peachtree.com

Best Communications Software: LapLink 2000; 425/483-8088, www.laplink.com

Best Group Application: HotOffice; 561/995-2220, www.hotoffice.com

A great team deserves top-notch equipment--hardware and software that give it the edge that it needs. The $1299 Xerox DocuPrint N2125 laser printer punches out crisp monochrome text at a zippy 11.7 pages per minute, and it sweetens the deal with such useful paper-handling options as an envelope feeder and a duplexer. For workgroup color-printing, the $1104 Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2 DeskLaser produces handsome prints at a reasonable price.

On the software side, Interact Commerce's ACT 2000 ($200) is a well-designed upgrade to a championship-caliber contact manager. Peachtree Complete Accounting 7 ($249) sports a sleek new look, plus features for helping businesses become e-businesses. For the telecommuters on your roster, LapLink 2000 ($169) adds even more Internet smarts to a veteran remote-access package. Players on the road can use HotOffice, a Web-based group application, for sharing calendars and contacts and for accessing (and keyword searching through) shared documents from any browser.

Graphics & Publishing

Best Business Graphics Software: Microsoft Visio 2000 Standard Edition; 800/248-4746, www.microsoft.com/visio

Best Image Editing Software (tie): Adobe Photoshop 5.5; 800/492-3623, www.adobe.com

Jasc Paint Shop Pro 6; 800/622-2793, www.jasc.com

Best Drawing Software: CorelDraw 9 Graphics Suite; 800/772-6735, www.corel.com

Best Web Design Software: Macromedia Dreamweaver 3 Fireworks 3 Studio; 800/457-1774, www.macromedia.com

Best Desktop Publishing Software: Adobe InDesign 1.5; 800/562-3623, www.adobe.com

A few veteran players dominate big-league design and publishing software. In the business world, the $199 Microsoft Visio 2000 Standard Edition comes to bat as a great diagramming tool with a slick new interface, Web features that enable you to convert diagrams to HTML, and faster drawing speeds. Who says flowcharts are boring? Not Microsoft, which just acquired this product.

It seems as though Photoshop has been synonymous with photo editing since the Dodgers moved to the West Coast. Adobe Photoshop 5.5 continues the tradition. In this version, Adobe augments Photoshop's already rich feature set with ImageReady 2, its high-end Web graphics application, giving 5.5 a full suite of Web capabilities. While Photoshop comes with a large-market price tag--$609--the $99 Jasc Paint Shop Pro 6 is much kinder to your wallet and still packs quite a punch as a full-featured image editor. Paint Shop Pro takes the extra base, too, by doubling as a drawing program with vector illustration features.

In professional illustration, CorelDraw 9 Graphics Suite remains a clutch performer. For $470, this do-everything product combines the popular CorelDraw and Photo-Paint in one tightly integrated illustration, photo-editing, and painting package. Macromedia's Dreamweaver 3 Fireworks 3 Studio offers another outstanding partnership. This $399 package unites Dreamweaver's Web authoring and Fireworks' Web graphics so you can shorten download time, keep designs consistent, and gain unmatched control over Web pages' HTML code.

The only newcomer to our design and publishing lineup, the $699 Adobe InDesign 1.5, is a budding star among desktop publishing tools, with powerful navigational features, Adobe .pdf output, and multiple levels of undo. It also integrates seamlessly with Adobe's graphics apps.