SoftMakerReviews 2

SoftMaker Office seems to work quite well - although its interface is often wildly different from the brand name product.

However, if you order the "Backup CD" that SoftMaker offers as an extra cost option with each of their programs, you are really just throwing money away because they never bother shipping the CD. Over the past several months I purchased both SoftMaker Office and FlexiPDF and in both instances I ordered and paid for the Backup CD -- but I have never received either CD.

While I had been evaluating SoftMaker Office, I had asked their support a question about one function I use regularly in MS-Office that I couldn't find in SM-Office. I got a prompt response from SoftMaker support telling me how to find the function. It was there, but it just took a completely different approach to reach it. While I found the SoftMaker interface a bit odd, the software did work quite well and support had been prompt so I purchased the SoftMaker Office suite.

Unfortunately it seems that SoftMaker "Customer Support" is prompt for people they hope will buy their software, but once you have paid for the software that support disappears. As I mentioned above, I purchased both FlexiPDF and Office several weeks apart and in both instances I ordered the Backup CDs along with the software. I received email acknowledgements for both orders and the key for both programs, but after several months I still have never received the CD's and all attempts to contact SoftMaker Customer Support have been completely ignored.

I dl'ed the free version of this and installed only the word processor and spreadsheet. I've been playing with the wp part most of today and I think it's great. A few commands you have to look for but they're there. I do a newsletter every month for our small community and it has so many options. Inserting text boxes is a cinch and text automatically wraps around it. You can set it upgrade every so often or never upgrade at all, which I like because quite often the changes seem to be made just for the sake of change. It also comes with a few templates, more fonts than anyone would ever need, and what I really like is that you can set the default font in case you're like me and tend to use the same one most of the time. No grammar checker but there is a spell checker that you can access by clicking the icon. It also comes with a manual in PDF format which I won't be printing because it's some 700+ pages, but it's there if you need it. I recently tried both Open Office and Libra? Office and found them way too big and too hard to find what I wanted. In short, it has everything I want and none of the annoying things that I don't want.