InfoTech Heretic - Dump Microsoft Office for ClarisWorks

By Theo Gantos, CCP

Flying in the face of apparent controversy and MicroSoft marketing muscle I am recommending ClarisWorks to all my clients as the main general productivity application for the following reasons:

One application is orders of magnitude easier to support and train people in than a suite of multiple applications.
MS Office integration is mostly marketing hype, having been cobbled together in an effort to bolster sales against more tightly-integrated products.
ClarisWorks is much more affordable than MS Office. Site licenses are available at about $150 per user or less depending of course on the numbers.
ClarisWorks operates more identically across Macintosh and Windows systems than MS Office. "True" cross-platform applications cut support costs and make document interchange simpler.
Claris uses the more elegant XTND technology for file translation and conversion. If there's a file format you wish to import/export to, just drop the appropriate XTND translator into the Claris translators folder and voila! Instant understanding. DataViz makes a plethora of translators for under $80.
Claris has a reputation for free or nominal upgrade charges compared to Microsoft, who are legion for their annual "tax" (at right around $129). Thus, life cycle costs are also lower.
ClarisWorks is more intuitive and conforms to the Mac interface better than Office (which is based on code meant to be cross-compilable and therefore uses their own conventions for shortcut keys and menus). The downside of this is of course that it's much harder to switch from Word to ClarisWorks...I know...I had to go cold turkey myself two years ago.

In all fairness, there are a few areas where ClarisWorks needs help to truly supplant Word and Excel. First, sections would be nice for longer documents in WP. More varied and robust charting would eliminate the need for me to keep Excel around for high-end charting. They should also try to include more XTND translators for Microsoft WP and Spreadsheet formats, especially the new PC Word 6. I'd also like to see an XTND translator for import/export of the database with FileMaker Pro. The database would really benefit from the ability to lookup from one file besides the primary. In general, I'd like to see the ClarisWorks database look and work like a subset of FileMaker Pro. I'd also like Claris to include in their coupon envelope some info (special offer pricing?) on add-on dictonaries and thesauruses (thesauri?). I'd like to see Claris work with some third party to add glossaries in the manner of Word via Apple Event integration. Come to think of it, why doesn't Claris just roll in MacWrite Pro functionality into ClarisWorks and consolidate them into one product?

Overall, IMHO (in my humble opinion) for everything but writing a book (or a doctoral dissertation), ClarisWorks creams MicroSoft Office. And I don't mind saying so publicly to stir debate or working as a change agent to push my clients to switch for the obvious reasons I've listed.

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