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Crystal Office Giveaway
$34.95
EXPIRED

Giveaway of the day — Crystal Office

Crystal Office is the essential office suite ideal for home and business users, delivering more tools that make your work go faster and your life go easier.
$34.95 EXPIRED
User rating: 261 63 comments

Crystal Office was available as a giveaway on March 30, 2011!

Today Giveaway of the Day
$36.00
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Crystal Office is the essential office suite ideal for home and business users, delivering more tools that make your work go faster and your life go easier. Find all the essential office software to complete routine tasks faster and with better results.

Create and edit text and graphics in letters, reports, documents and Web pages. Perform calculation and manage lists in spreadsheets. Keep track of appointments and tasks. Open, edit and save Microsoft Office documents.

What's Included:

  • NotePro - feature-packed easy to use word processor.
  • DayMate- a versatile intuitive day planner.
  • CellPro- a powerful and easy-to-use spreadsheet application.
  • ChartPro- a project management software application that is used to create and display projects using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Chart.
  • Clip Plus - the award-winning Windows Clipboard enhancer.

System Requirements:

Windows XP/ Vista/ 7

Publisher:

Crystal Office Systems

Homepage:

http://www.crystaloffice.com/office/

File Size:

27.3 MB

Price:

$34.95

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Comments on Crystal Office

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#63

Today, it informed me that an update was available...it's not a free update. I've uninstalled the applications...

I wish we had a longer period of time to use and evaluate this software...

Reply   |   Comment by S!ick  –  12 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#62

I've read here, a few comments referring to the developers wasting their time trying to reinvent MS Office. I wonder if these same people would have been against the invention of the airplane ( we already have a perfectly good zepplin after all) or the PC because a calculator is faster and easier to use (LOL). Seriously though, we don't like change do we!

Kudos for the effort, at least. Personally, I would love to see MS be given a run for "my" money. I use Open Office as the price is right, and I've gotten used to it LOL. But I have to figure that the developers of OO, also faced this kind of criticism, mind they aren't trying to sell it either. I think Crystal Office Systems made a good decision to offer this at GOTD, to gain feedback, and IMPROVE their software. Having said that, I'm not going to download this as I'm happy with what I have, and I just re-installed Win7, to clear out my registry of all the previous Giveaways. Thanks for the chance to try this and many others. I look forward to checking out tomorrow's offering.

P.S. I kept list of programs, and will endeavor to purchase the ones I wish to keep. Thanks again GOTD

Reply   |   Comment by D  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#61

#23: while I am not an IT support dude myself, I do have enough experience with office productivity implementations to have a good opinion on the subject. OpenOffice & OpenOffice.org are currently considered as business options for office productivity suites. At the company we use rather heavy spreadsheets, and the single issue here that we've run into, is that several macros created in Excel don't run in OOo. That said, it's really possible that further issues to experience involve those described by you, but lessay we've been lucky, to the point where we, our suppliers and now even our customers feel satisfied with the use of OOo. As for the rest of your post, I really couldn't agree more. I've seen a lot of PCs running Office 2000 and the users wish to stay THAT way, thankyouverymuch, any MS Office upgrades are unwelcome. And yes, WE HATE THE RIBBON in MS Office 2007 >:-(

#32: do you recommend KOffice for Windows? I have never tried it.

#33: thank you, got it straigh in my face :D While my choice is OOo, I *sadly* have to keep MS Office due to several factors. But I essentially am in the transition MS Office bloatware --> OOo. I do agree that the negative posts shall be dismissed, and that the developer must be encouraged to keep on trying. OK, there are issues, and many, but this shall be taken as indicators of the features to work out, not as a bully list of "get out of here". If nobody else would have tried, then we would actually have MS Office as the sole option, and we don't. We have a gazillion of options, some good in something, some others good in something else.

Developer: as posted above. KEEP TRYING, people :) I will try your suite, and I don't encourage you to quit. Somewhere along the line, you will find your own sense of added value and your product will become profitable. Suggestion: make your suite able to admit plug-ins, cause BTW that's one of the reasons why many of us use programs like MS Office Outlook. I mean, if restricted to core functionality, I could use Evolution, but the plug-ins make Outlook work with almost any conceived app/service, and that's something Evolution can't do as of today. The plug-ins are there essentially to enable your own program far beyond your own work. Look around, grab the ideas, and allow the plug-ins :)

GAOTD: as always, thank you :D

Reply   |   Comment by HAL  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#60

Not freeware but a much better alternative: Softmaker Office, also sold as Ashampoo Office.

Compatible with MS Office documents including newer formats such as DOCX and XLSX.

Better than Open Office (or Libre Office) because unlike those, it is not a mammoth monolith. The word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs are separate standalone apps that can be used together as needed, or individually.

Reply   |   Comment by Neil from Ohio  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)
#59

Here is one: http://www.serif.com/desktop-publishing-software/

Rather basic, but quite usable for simpler jobs.

Reply   |   Comment by questions  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#58

@39, Serif PagePlus SE is another. It's a cutdown version of that company's full commercial program but still pretty good. Search for freeserifsoftware. (Nothing against this Crystal Office but PagePlus is intended to be DTP.)

And, I applaud any company trying to make a better or different Office suite.

Reply   |   Comment by J  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#57

Abe Post#18:..Thanks for the url to the free lotus symphony from IBM..Even though it is a monster is size 258 mb plus the 30 mb fix file..It is one of my favorites..I will download Crystal to compare..But I don't
think it will compete with Lotus..and the features of symphony.

Reply   |   Comment by Dan  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#56

"Could you please name some of those free to use DTP packages?"
Serif Page Plus for simplicity, Scribus for power. Of course you could get along with LibreOffice, but Scribus is made to be a DTP adjunct to LO.

Reply   |   Comment by Col. Panek  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#55

My suggestion would be to break these tools up and offer them individually for around $10. I would suspect that Clip Pro and the ChartPro would be the big sellers.

I downloaded this giveaway for only one of the applications - Clip Plus. Over the years I have, on many occasions, needed to cut & paste the same images in several different places. This always entailed clipping the first item, paste it, then clip item 2, paste it, and then go back and get the first item and repeat the process. I had hoped that this tool would provide me with a way to right click and select the image I wanted to paste. But alas, it doesn't do that. It just collects all of the items you copy/cut and saves them until you delete them. You can then go back at some point in the future and retrieve what you had copied to the clipboard by, you guessed it, copy/past it again. I'm sure this tool has a place but it just seems somewhat unnecessary in it's current implementation.

Reply   |   Comment by SteveB  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#54

Readme.txt file extension had to be changed to: Readme.odt for me to read it. Program installed and registered in VISTA OS okay and is fully functional. The "Chart" portion of the program is very useful for my geneaolgy charting and being able to color code the name boxes makes family identification simple. Large charts need to be scaling reduced in page setup before printing. Very satisfied with this aspect of the "suite". Price is too high for the limited functionality and lack of "Undo" feature. Suggest $15.95 as a fair price to avoid consumer disappointment.

Reply   |   Comment by Joe  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#53

It's a simple program that tries to do what Office does, but it's too simple. This is like one of those utilities that comes packaged with the computer that you never wind up using.

I've been using OpenOffice since it was StarOffice and at this point I have no interest in changing. Furthermore, this program only seems to use one type of format for each type of file. Both Office and OpenOffice allow for many. And since most of my documents are currently in OpenOffice formats, I would have to reformat them all.

While $35 isn't a bad price for an office suite, it's still too much for what's being offered. What they need to do is to make it free for personal use just like OpenOffice if they want to have any hope of breaking in. This could be a fairly good program in five or six years if they keep expanding it, but right now it just doesn't have enough features to compete.

Reply   |   Comment by Patrick McNamara  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#52

I like the "Chart" feature in this program. I'm doing some genealogy research and the charting works well for family tree building. It has the ability to color-code the chart boxes to make identifying each family easier. I haven't explored the other functionality since I am well satisfied with the always FREE Open Office. I am having difficulty getting the product to register in WIN VISTA. All I currently have is the trial version which will not allow any work saved to be printed.

Reply   |   Comment by Carburetor  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#51

I use notepad more than any other test program. It keeps trying to associate .txt files with Crystal Office. Does any one know how to stop this? I have search through all the options. Here is the alert I am getting:

http://lulzimg.com/view/abd04f.png

Reply   |   Comment by Chris  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#50

lets see,

Office Professional Plus 2010 (32-bit) – 650 MB
Office Professional Plus 2010 (64-bit) – 718 MB
Office 2011 for Mac - 927 MB
Office 2008 for Mac – 582 MB
Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) – 2.24 GB
Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) – 2.89 GB


Crystal Office 38.1 MB Installed

AND Crystal Office Does Not Hog memory.
You be the judge

Thanks Crystal Office Systems. You Are Now my Main Office Suite.
Thank you GOTD for this great giveaway

Reply   |   Comment by Rob  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#49

I for one am glad to see that there are people still trying to produce a nice decently priced office suite. Personally, I find both Microsoft's insanely expensive and OpenOffice's free offerings to be krap.



Someone was looking for free DTP:

Scribus (OpenSource), http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus
(IIRC this one requires Ghostscript http://www.ghostscript.com/)

Serif Page Plus Starter Edition(registration required),
http://www.serif.com/desktop-publishing-software/

Reply   |   Comment by Uber Goober  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#48

it also does .xls sheets! bye bye so long to ms office for me!!!!!!

Reply   |   Comment by zZzAMBeezZziE  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#47

I downloaded this SW soon after mid-night before any comments. It installed great and registered just fine. As a retired secretary who was a nit-picky perfectionist, that had to type without errors and yes, long, long, long before desktop. Yes, back in the days before Bill Gates came along with the now famous Microsoft. You would have to enter the program(s) of your choice at the DOS prompt. Aaaaaah what memories. Anywho, as an artist with alot of art graphic SW, I still keep my fingers into office products. Just to keep informed you know. On my machine I currently have Open Office, OxygenOpen Office Prof Suite, SoftMaker, PortalApps Suite and oh yes, MS Office (whatever my IT puts on the machines he builds for me). They are not used as extensively as I once used SW such as this, but keeps me up to speed. Now for Crystal Office. Why I downloaded this was simply that I almost passed up Maple Professional. (Yes I like it) It was downloaded and is used constantly instead of that good OLE MS Notepad. It works great for my other work. That is a keeper. When I saw this package, I thought, "hmmmmmmm" and hit the download button. Yes, it is not a dynamo power house, but is very nice, clean, not cluttered and for most home types has just enough of what you might need. I have been working on this SW (after a short nap as it was around 2:00a.m.- :)after the download when I finished playing around.) I rather enjoy the program. Someone mentioned that there was no spelling checker in NotePro. There is a spelling checker and a thesaurus as I had to use it. The CellPro is not too bad. I never really got into Excel and the others. Real heavy, and for people who need a heavy feature, that's okay. Use them. Since Lotus is mentioned here - yes I used Lotus, eons ago when we all would simply pull our hair out. Some would run in the opposite direction at the thought of using it for an assignment. (Now I could give you some horror stories) Soooo, the boss eventually was left mastering Lotus. Not that Lotus was not good, and I am quite sure it has come along way since the stone ages. (Most SW does) Out of curosity though, I will check out Lotus Symphony to learn. At the moment, I am diving into ChartPro. Nice and fun. Will keep working on this. Have looked at ClipPlus but not really worked with it as yet - will do so shortly. I like the DayMate. It has a real nice Mac.wav for schedule alerts. A nice Clock (12-24 hr/transparency) and a World Clock. All-in all, I really cannot complain about any software. There is usually something for everyone and that's why I have so much SW :\ to try and eventually buy. Of late, there have been programs to come here to GAOTD that have fit in to what my work patterns are. Thank GAOTD and Crystal Office for this offering. I do believe that as with Maple Prof this one will stay with me. Have a nice day everyone. Enjoy the offerings presented to you and give 'em a try. Ya never know what might twik your fancy and it would be a shame to let the opportunity to slip by.

Reply   |   Comment by Sharon  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#46

@Norman - for your DOS PC, you might be able to pick up an old copy of WordPerfect 5.1 or 6.0 for DOS - these were the top of the line word processors back in the DOS days. 5.1 still has its devoted fans, it's an excellent (non-WYSIWYG) program. I believe it will also run on XP.

Reply   |   Comment by Antsy  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#45

Thsi software is a great free alternative to MS Office. I think they duid a splendid job. As for OPen Office. It is by far the biggest POS software package out there. Oh but it's free. Yeah well so is dog sh|t but that doesn't mean I'm gonna eat it for dinner. Keep up the great work Crystal office team and don't listen to these naysayers. I swear it's nothing but a bunch of whiney little boys and girls on here who have nothing better to do than to rip apart someone else;'s work when they clearly couldn't even begin to conceive how to create a bit of software much less actually create something from nothing.

Reply   |   Comment by Jim  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#44

This has SERIOUS flaws in Unicode and ISO language support.
Spreadsheets crash if they're in Unicode or ISO,

All files crash or hang if they use non-English ISO text in headers or metadata.

No vertical highlighting

Document size/length limitations are too restrictive

XML/XHTML support? Can't figure out how to make documents work at all.

Scripting code (raw text) doesn't load right

As an 'ALPHA' work-in-progress this would show promise but as a finished PAID COMMERCIAL product, if falls way short of MS Office, OpenOffice.Org, SunOffice, and STAR, not to mention dozens of other free programs from the sourceforge repositories.

Reply   |   Comment by lostinlodos  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#43

39.@32/Ragnar,
Could you please name some of those free to use DTP packages? Thanks.


TeX, for one.

Reply   |   Comment by G  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#42

mAN, 30% thumbsup, WHAT A friggin' joke my god
I WOULD much rather install and use this gem than i would wait 20 minutes for office 2011 to install and then take mega of my precious 6GB of memory from me, kudos to crystal office team for providing such a kick butt software suite within 22MB to boot!!! amazingly cool, give credit where credit is due superb programming nice interface awesome guys & gals! tyvvm.

zZzAMBeezZziE-march-2011 11am pst

Reply   |   Comment by zZzAMBeezZziE  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#41

Some say that doing the same thing over & over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. I'd say that reinventing the wheel over & over again and expect to profit is insanity. Why would any group of sane people try to reinvent Microsoft Office & think they're going to make a profit? And if you're not trying to make a profit, why not donate your time & efforts to OpenOffice?

I simply don't understand why these developers spent their valuable time, energy & money on yet another Microsoft Office clone when that time, energy & money could have been better spent offering something that MS Office &/or OpenOffice do not offer. For example, forget the Office clone components & spend your time on fully developing the day planner application with full integration with MS Office, OpenOffice, Outlook & others, as well as portable devices where they may be a market?

Sorry folks, but I'm with the majority here - I have not downloaded this one, nor will I - and there is absolutely nothing here to make me want to change my mind. I'm still using MS Office 2002 and when the time comes that I NEED to upgrade, I'll migrate over to OpenOffice.

Reply   |   Comment by DrKenB  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)
#40

- Doesn´t install as user under Win7!
- Shows as evaluation version when started as user under Win7!
Can only be installed as admin (setup fails when started as user) and can only be executed as registered version as admin under Win7!

Reply   |   Comment by Fred  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-5)
#39

@32/Ragnar,
Could you please name some of those free to use DTP packages? Thanks.

Reply   |   Comment by Joe  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#38

#11: "... but in my 5-6 years of servicing home PCs I’ve never come across anyone using anything other than MSO or Open Office."

Just teasing, I guess that means WordPerfect users are savvy enough they don't need outside help with their PCs/laptops. :-)

Seriously though, Corel must have some decent sales figures or they'd have dropped WordPerfect like other apps they've sold or discontinued. It's a pretty decent suite, & if you pick it up on an OEM disc for $10-20 a huge bargain compared to MS Ofc. Of course Open Ofc is cheaper still for free, & if it was choice of free vs. $100+ I'd use it, but for some likely odd & [so far] unknown reason I just never have liked the *feel* of it. Oh well...

* * *

#18: "IBM now offers the Lotus Symphony Suite for free... If anyone has used Lotus Symphony, please leave your comments here."

Haven't used Symphony -- used to be a big fan of Lotus 'till IBM put the Lotus office stuff on a back burner, figuring they wanted to have *something* for big customers, but didn't want to fool with developing/updating the apps any longer. [It became harder & harder to get & keep the Lotus suite working as Windows advanced, & even with (rare) new versions Lotus didn't keep pace.] That would be my 1st concern personally -- is IBM just testing the waters &/or maybe making a minimal effort to satisfy their corp clients? With Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. all fighting to be top dog "in the Cloud", & with the competition between Microsoft & Google re: on-line office apps Only heating up, a Lotus offering that may not be there that long doesn't sound like a great choice to me. Another *Maybe* consideration -- Windows 8 will likely be here next year, & leaks/rumors say it'll leverage the cloud much more than win7... if so the competition could really heat up, and, might see a lot of improvements with using MS Ofc on-line.

* * *

#32: "There is ONE good reason to use any other alternative than OpenOffice... "

Purely FWIW, I wanted to mention simple like/dislike -- I can use Open Ofc, have tried to use Open Ofc since it was Star Ofc & still free of big corp ownership [yes, I know Open Ofc is the open source version], & for whatever reasons just do not like using it. That matters, sometimes a Lot... I imagine it can be confusing [maybe even confounding :-) ] to more practical-minded users & devs, but when you like one app better than all or most others there's not necessarily a single, purely practical reason for it. It's like spinach -- we should all probably eat it, it's generally thought good for you, but some people like my wife loath it more than any other veggie on earth. Now I'm not *that* bad when it comes to Open Ofc, but I can honestly say I haven't fired it up since the latest version came out, & that was only for a taste. ;-)

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)
#37

I've been using IBM Lotus Symphony and it's great, I didn't try Crystal so I can't compare.
Symphony has a "High Performance" option that accelerates the program to load quicker, it's phenomenal. If you want to compare to Open Office, don't, it's built around Open Office.
Abe, I've known about Symphony for a long time. What do you mean, "IBM NOW offers the Lotus Symphony Suite for free"?

Reply   |   Comment by megaman  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#36

The value in today's offering is for users with low-power machines, ie. older PCs/laptops or current netbooks.
I haven't downloaded this myself as my PC can run OpenOffice, and my laptop came with MS installed.
However I understand the frustration of having an older machine and struggling to find software that will run on it. I recently reactivated a 15-year-old HP handheld which runs an early version of DOS and it has been difficult finding free software online to install on it.

Reply   |   Comment by Norman  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#35

Love Crystal Office. Installed it last year when I didn't want to pay for another MS Office license on a new laptop.

It's much faster than Open Office. Similar functionality (for the core office product), but doesn't seem to bog down my system like OO does.

Can't comment on the dayplanner or charts pieces, as I mainly use it as a replacement for Word and Excel.

Reply   |   Comment by Eric  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#34

Crystal Office is a fairly lightweight collection of individual apps that [per the help files] can also be run portably [Note that you would need to register portable versions with a key]. One or more of the individual apps or the whole collection might appeal to some folks because of their relative simplicity, & might be a good enough alternative to Open Office if they don't want to [or can't] use Java. Crystal Office doesn't have the integration, import/export compatibility, nor the bells & whistles that have been more-or-less standard in office suites dating back to the earliest versions of MS Ofc &/or Ami Pro -- a plus to some, a minus to others. Today's GOTD includes: a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Calendar, Clipboard Extender, & a flow chart / diagramming app.

Installing Crystal Office the greatest impact is to the registry, with ~14000 new entries recorded in both XP & win7 -- however the vast majority of those entries is in the Crystal Office key, so fairly easy to get rid of, which is a good thing should you decide to run it as a portable app [there isn't a separate or individual portable install -- see the help files for directions]. Note that the registration key is stored in the User portion of the registry, so you might want to run Activate.exe in every Windows user profile you've set up. Folders are added to (My) Documents & either All User Application Data [XP] or Program Data [win7], while the suite's folder holds 200 files, 12 folders, & ~40 MB.

Using NotePro the 1st thing I noticed was no spell checking as you type -- I've learned to ignore that & correct later during a proof read, but not having miss-spellings highlighted may be a plus to some [though you can usually turn that off]. The 2nd thing I noticed was an absence of frames -- the feature that attracted me to Ami Pro a decade ago, & is now a part of most word processors -- though you can use NotePro's tables in a pinch [it's a bit of a kludge compared to the options & handling in some [most?] word processors, going back & eliminating the borders if/as needed, but it works]. Likewise paragraph formatting is limited to the basics -- as someone who used to focus on print, I was actually a bit shocked to see paragraph measurements only in inches & cm, which prepared me for the missing leading & kerning. That said, I don't think this is an app you'd use to go to print with anyway, so for many uses it'll probably be fine.

ChartPro, the flow charting app used to create: "Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) charts" [Wikipedia http://goo.gl/3YrR ], is called project mgmt software in the help file & on the app's site, but being more along the lines of a severely limited Visio, it's definitely not what I think of when I read Project Mgmt. CellPro reminds me of what spreadsheet apps used to look like years ago, before they had people making careers out of teaching how to use the latest Excel. That's good or bad depending on what features you need & your comfort level with something more advanced or full-featured. Missing is any mention of charts &/or graphs. The remaining 2, the DayMate calendar & Clip Plus clipboard extender, aren't leading edge by any means, but these simpler, easier to use alternatives to more well known apps might appeal to anyone who feels more isn't always better.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+19)
#33

@ Chuck, #24: Many thanks from what may be many of us here for your thoughtful and constructive post.

I do get weary of hearing about how if something's old, then it must be rubbish. And I especially tire of it when it's Microsoft Fanboys incapable of understanding that they keep falling for -- and encouraging -- MS to yet further expand its awful bloatware.

I use Office 2000. A lot. It works so well for me, I have an anxiety attack just contemplating any friend's machine upon which resides the latest elephant that's Microsoft Office.

Thanks then, Chuck, for talking sense. And thanks, too, to GOATD, for all the apps they've brought to everyone's attention, and made available on free download, over the years -- including those from the very beginning. (But of course, they're all old now. So they're all just so much rubbish, right. . ?)

As to Crystal Office: I have Microsoft Office 2000 and also, on my laptop, Open Office. I don't have the time nor the need to seek out and examine any Office alternative. But, but, but. . .

GOATDers who don't have either should -- please! -- ignore witless posts on here about how Crystal Office is a waste of time because it's just a re-tread of Microsoft Office 2000.

Don't be put off: though the idiots passing such judgement don't seem to realise it, they're actually giving today's offering one of the best recommendations of all.

Thanks, GOATD.

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+13)
#32

There is ONE good reason to use any other alternative than OpenOffice and derivatives.
That is for running on underpowered machines. OpenOffice is relatively slow and memory hungry, but fine on good enough hardware.

The problem is that these alternatives are often lacking in features and have serious compatibility issues. But that's ok for many.
Abiword and Koffice are fine examples of such lightweight software.

MS Office basic components since 95 has only 4 "major" changes since 95, apart from Excel.
That is new file format, the dreadful rubberband menu, slightly better graphics in Word and finally faster startup (by cheating).

Excel is the only thing that has really improved.

There are free to use DTP packages that are still better than word for complex layout. In that respect, MS Word is amazingly lacking.


I guess that Crystal-office strength has to be in what's different. Which is the day planner.
Few of the alternatives offers those features.

Maple, from that same company, actually quite well known and relatively popular.


What would make me buy an alternative Office bundle, is mainly one thing:

The ability to open and work with Excel files larger than 65536 rows.

Reply   |   Comment by Ragnar  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+10)
#31

Caution! This company also makes Maple, a two-pane tree PIM/Outliner.
I used Maple when it was first introduced in English and for a while used the updates. There was one BIG problem. Crystal kept changing the file format and as time went on, it became increasingly difficult to import files created with a previous version into the current version. I finally gave up. Perhaps Crystal no longer has that problem, that is, it has learned that it doesn't pay to aggravate your loyal customers. Perhaps not.

Reply   |   Comment by Stephen Cohen  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#30

Yes, is there any better alternative of ChartPro?
Thanks

Reply   |   Comment by Ozawa  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-10)
#29

Crystal Office worked on Ubuntu using CrossOver, but I don't see a good reason to use Crystal Office. LibreOffice is much better and free.

Reply   |   Comment by Gulfstream  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#28

This suite in fact is several separate applications.On my old laptop I have other wordprocessor and spreadsheet installed from before, but the calendar and clipboard utilities are usefull supplements.You can install the modules seperately,uninstalls clean from the registry,as far I can see.Thank you.

Reply   |   Comment by polle  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#27

ChartPro
Has anyone got good experiences with this part of the suite?
The overall opinion implies I'd better looked for an alternative, so suggestions are welcome. More specifically if useful for the project of relocating & building.

Reply   |   Comment by JohnDP  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-7)
#26

This software is 5 years behind all other office software. Can't even handle Office 2007/2010 files. Not to say the open format OpenOffice is using . Not worth paying for.

Reply   |   Comment by ghostza  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#25

Here's the link to CNET's 4.5/5 star review:- http://download.cnet.com/Crystal-Office/3000-10743_4-10881820.html

Well worth getting as today's GOTD if you aren't used to Word's ribbon bar, or Word is too costly! I use Word very regularly and like the ribbon bar but it took a LOT of learning and has some particularly bad niggles such as finding where to convert between tables and text and the reverse!

As for it being a clone of Word 2000, is this a bad thing?

It's also very, as in extremely useful if you are short of hard disk space!

Reply   |   Comment by sparkles  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)
#24

No Ribbon menu bar ,Fluent User Interface, then i am not interested, lets go with the times and have the easy to use and look at standard set by MS.

Reply   |   Comment by JoJo  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-48)
#23

For those that are saying that this is equivalent to Microsoft Office 2000, so what? I'm not recommending this software by any means (I haven't even tried it), but what's so wrong about Office 2000?

I've worked in IT for the last 20 years, and I've had to support many different versions of Microsoft Office. For 99% of the users that I've supported over the years, there's no real difference between any version of Office since Office 95. Well, really, there are two differences: 1) Each new version is more bloated than the last, meaning that you need a faster computer with more memory to run it. 2) Starting with Office 2007, they introduced that stupid ribbon that almost all of the users HATE...I've had employees beg me to downgrade them to Office 2003. Unfortunately, once the company decides to upgrade, it's an all-or-nothing thing.

Personally, I've been using Office 2000 at home (with Outlook 2003 added for access to the Exchange server at the office) for about 10 years now. Why? Because I was able to buy a legal copy of Office 2000 direct from Microsoft way back then for about $30 through a special offer, and because I've seen absolutely no reason to upgrade. The company provides me with a laptop with the current version of Office for things I need to do for work. There are few users of Office that need any of the newer features in the newer versions, and I'm certainly one of those that do not need those newer features. And Office 2000 will open and save the newer "x" documents (.docx, etc.) with a free update from Microsoft.

Could everybody get by with Office 2000? No. However, in my home environment, it works great. I don't use 90+% of Office 2000's features. Who does? If you're talking about a business environment, of course you should be using the same version as the rest of your company does for the maximum file compatibility with others. But who in a business environment is even considering using Crystal Office? Or even OpenOffice, for that matter?

As part of my IT responsibilities a couple of years ago, I did my annual review of OpenOffice to see if it could replace Microsoft Office in our workplace and save the company some money. The first two Excel 2003 spreadsheets that I tried to open (neither of which were very complex) both crashed with a rather generic error message. Other users in other departments reported the same types of failures, so we stayed with Microsoft Office. I don't know if it runs better on Linux or not, but we're a Windows shop.

However, for home use, OpenOffice or Crystal Office are probably perfectly fine. What does a home user really need with an office suite anyway? Most people just need to be able to type a letter, maybe print some address labels or envelopes from time to time, and only use a spreadsheet for the most basic functions that have been available since before Windows existed. For these users, I see no problem with Crystal Office (or Office 2000).

Reply   |   Comment by Chuck  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+56)
#22

#3: "If you want to pay just get Microsoft, or Corel, or Textmaker . . . this is a crowded space."

FWIW, besides the MS home/student versions going for ~$100 there are a few places selling MS Ofc 2010 Pro keys for <$100 -- supposedly legit if you believe posts on fatwallet, but caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.

Corel's Wordperfect suite isn't bad IMHO -- I've been able to find OEM discs w/keys for $10-20 most versions. And while I've no idea how good it is/isn't, Ashampoo's been running sales with their office suite cheap.

Careful on the Libre Ofc suite -- IMHO at least Google/Bing 1st as it's still new -- have come across complaints on bugs. Can't get into too much trouble running the portableapps.com version, but in the middle of a project that sort of thing can be a hassle.

And of course there's the on-line apps/tools that only get better as MS & Google compete... those on-line tools might be all you need, & there are advantages if you've got limited storage [laptops/netbooks/tablets] &/or need the sharing features.

For those that just need more than Notepad or Wordpad but don't want to bother with a full blown suite there are also apps like AbiWord -- also available as a portable at portableapps.com.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+20)
#21

Rename "_portable.flag" to "portable.flag" in order to start the software in portable mode.

Reply   |   Comment by usb man  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)
#20

Why not write a program that does something different? A niche program like NOTA BENE.

Reply   |   Comment by Dan D  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#19

It's nice, it's clean and quite attractive.

Reply   |   Comment by Phil K  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-10)
#18

IBM now offers the Lotus Symphony Suite for free -

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home

If anyone has used Lotus Symphony, please leave your comments here.

Reply   |   Comment by Abe  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+18)
#17

Just look at Crystal Office's rating at Softpedia.

User Rating:
Rated by: Poor (1.8/5)
47 user(s

Reply   |   Comment by Al B  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+42)
#16

A reinvention of the wheel. Only it isn't quite round, mostly octagonal.

Reply   |   Comment by Glenn C  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+17)
#15

It got a real good review from CNET (download.com)
and it's nice and lean and efficient.

I like the Calendar, and you can turn on the holidays for over 100 countries.

A simple Office Suite with some extra features. Great for older machines and portables

Reply   |   Comment by Rob  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)
#14

OpenOffice is free and has better functionality than Crystal-Office, and LibreOffice is better than OpenOffice(*).

(*) On principle OpenOffice will not use any LibreOffice code because Oracle want the right to sell commercial versions of it, while LibreOffice is legally free to use any OpenOffice code. LibreOffice also has access to the Go-OpenOffice code base, parts of which have already been incorporated, and which give superior functionality.

Reply   |   Comment by AJW  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+22)
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