EVER increasing sophistication means that there is little a suite like Office 97 or its Lotus or Corel rivals cannot tackle. But this power brings complexity. Already, veteran Microsoft Word users can happen across new features after years of using the program. It is no wonder that it, and other Office 97 programs can be very daunting for newcomers.
Microsoft has recognised the danger and gone all out to tackle it, with tips, Office Assistants and "wizards" to step users through new tasks. The users, the ultimate testers, will decide whether this is sufficient.
This version of Office comes only 18 months after the previous update. As well as introducing new features it changes quite a few of the ways to carry out standard tasks, so even existing users will have some learning to do. With the shortening life cycle of major software products some users, and managers, may be tempted to shout "stop" and get off the upgrade merry go round.
Office 97 has new file formats, so older versions of Word will not open files saved by 97, causing further problems for network managers.
The latest Office is not just a matter of stuffing more features into the core programs of the suite: Word, Excel (spreadsheet) and Powerpoint (presentations) - plus the Access database in the "professional" edition. Outlook, the information manager which replaces Schedule+ in the standard and professional editions is genuinely innovative.
As well as the contacts list, task list and scheduler typical of these programs, Outlook sends and receives email and can be used to initiate phone calls. Better, it tracks time spent on these and other Office documents and within a workgroup it can track things like meeting requests from other users. Its journal of daily work can be used to answer the perennial question "where did the day go?" or to find that file created last Wednesday.
Sneaking up behind the big suites of office software running on ever more powerful PCs - and Office 97 does not sparkle on a Pentium 75 with 16 MB of RAM - is another approach. Java based programs offer the promise of small component "applets" which are downloaded from a server to a low cost network computer for a particular task and then discarded afterwards. Network managers are promised much lower support, training and hardware costs.
Byte magazine backed both by giving Office 97 an award for the best software at last autumn's Comdex show but also suggesting that many Windows programmers will soon switch to Java.
Regardless of this, one element of Office 97 excites someone who has been word processing since the days of the inaptly named WordStarExpress. For its range of features, shortcuts and ease of customisation, Word wins this user's admiration.