Office 2000 Premium Part III: Access, PowerPoint and the Small Business Tools What's New In Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Douglas Smith
Introduction The Microsoft Office 2000 Premium basic package is sporting something of a face-lift and includes a few Small Business Tools, covered in this review, that should make life much easier for those running an office of their own. Most of the Office programs--Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, and FrontPage, plus Internet Explorer 5.0 are on disk one, with productivity tools such as Publisher, Photo Draw, and Small Business Tools on disk two through four.
The Major Changes In Office 2000 The very first thing that hits you is the newly designed installation routine which gives much more control over which of the eight programs to install and how much precious hard disk each package eats up. The total package consumes a whopping 526 MB and Microsoft recommends another 100 MB for optimal performance for temp files when using user graphics. If you're serious about utilizing MS Office you will need at least a Pentium Class PC 166 MHz or higher with at least 32 MB and preferably 64 MB of RAM for using Photo Draw or Publisher. This version requires Windows 95/98/ME/NT 4.0 SP 4 or higher/ or 2000 and at least a Super VGA or higher Monitor, CD, and a Mouse.
We found the programs integrated well and ran very smoothly on our AMD 700 Duron with 128 MB of RAM. The installation was much quicker than previous versions of the software--only 15 minutes to install the basic package. Microsoft has changed the look and feel considerably, with new icons to launch each application and great new Wizards. With MS Office having a far larger footprint than earlier versions, running on PCs that just meet the minimum qualifications could cause problems with speed and multitasking. Another major change in this version of Office is that Premium is geared more for collaboration and information sharing, allowing users to easily share documents, e-mail, databases, etc. Along with these modifications come more defined Web integration and tools.
Does It Feel the Same? The new look and feel of MS Office is evident from the moment that you launch an application. Group collaboration is the biggest theme and those running a small business or large corporation who rely on Office to share data with others shouldn't be disappointed. Most businesses and small offices are becoming more and more Web-dependent and this is reflected in Microsoft's idea of how an office package should perform. Strong emphasis is placed on issues that Web users find very compelling; sharing information is made much easier with the way each element blends with the others. Most of the applications feel similar to their predecessors but with some new looks to interfaces in terms of colors, icons, and help. Clearly, Microsoft has done its homework and listened to its users; installation headaches have been addressed with the Demand feature for controlled installation of particular components. Simply click on a component and it is installed immediately, without fuss. Web enhancements which allow for better workgroup collaboration and end-user access to data seems to be the key improvement.
In this last installment in the Office 2000 review series, we'll look at the most business-oriented tools in the suite: Access, Powerpoint, and the small business tools.
