Not to disregard my commentary on the VBA problem, for to do so may be to invite major problems, but to be totally fair, this version of WordPerfect has the potential of being as much a classic as WP5.1 was/is in the DOS world.
Considering it's the initial release of the program, it's stable enough that I've been able to use it as my only word processing software for about a month now. That's really something considering I earn my living by writing and therefore need stability in the software I use. And that constant use is regardless of the fact that I also have WP 5.1 and 6.2 for DOS and 6.1 and 8 for Windows on my machine. All are running just fine, thanks.
It's also fast. I've only got a Pentium I, 166 MHz machine with 128 Mb of RAM. Yet it sings along at much the same speed, as far as I can tell without stop watching it, as WP5.1 does on the same machine.
I'm going to leave reviews of Quattro Pro and Paradox and Presentations to folks more expert in those areas than I. I will eventually review the new Corel Central and DAD components of the Corel Office 2000 when I've had more of a play with them.
So, firstly, let's get the negative out of the way first.
Until I'm proven wrong, I remain convinced that implementing VBA into WP was a mistake and opens up the program to all sorts of negative possibilities, most crucially a susceptibility to macro viruses.
I suspect Corel realised that too, way down deep, because they've implemented it in such a way that you'd have to really want it in order to install it. It's only available through a custom install and then it's a couple of menus deep before you find it. Additionally, they claim to have implemented a revised and reduced command structure version of VBA 6 and instituted other security features which "for security reasons" they won't even announce.
My recommendation is to stay away from VBA as though it were the black plague, at least until a sound verdict is in. And I picture that will be about another six months.
1. Home, Home Up and Home, Home, Home Up, instead of taking you to the top of the document or the top of the document before any codes respectively, takes you to a totally blank area, apparently above the actual document. Only by hitting pg dn, pg up can you see your text again.
2. Undelete sometimes allows hitting enter/return to restore a deletion and sometimes doesn't, thus necessitating use of mouse click.
3. The thesaurus is broken. It shows a numeric outline form but without the text. There are some work-arounds, but they disable peripherals such as your scanner. Also the thesaurus, when you do see it by using one of the work-arounds, turns out to be a children's thesaurus rather than the excellent, full-featured one we're used to from version 8 and earlier.
As I have with every version of WP since 5.1, I've reset my keyboard to emulate the 5.1 model or as close to it as possible. In the case of WP9 it's a WPDOS 6.1 emulation. And to that I've switched some and added other features from WP5.1 into their proper places.
These are features that I can't live without and after using WP5.1 for so long I have no desire to retrain my mind or my fingers to find them in other places. For example:
All back on their WP5.1 keys. Bill Gates may have ordained that help be on F1, but that AIN'T where it belongs. It Belongs where god and WP5.1 placed it, on F3, which is where I've placed it on all my versions since then.
But back to WP9, which Corel, in its wisdom refused to call WP2000 (though they did cave in on naming the entire suite Office 2000, which is fine by me, it means when Joe Bloggs goes in to Sammy's Software Haven and asks for Office 2000, he's got as much chance of getting Corel's Office 2000 as he does M$'s similarly-named thing).
And now on to why I believe WP9 is a best buy:
All in all, this is a goody. A service pack (SP) is due out soon to take care of problems some people have encountered in the program's first two months on general release. I wouldn't wait. Go and get the package, install it, play with it, work with it and download the SP from the Corel Website when it's ready. But at least this way you'll have got refamiliarised with a good old friend.
And once you've invested in WordPerfect 9 (from Beyond.com perhaps), I heartily recommend the following third party books on WP9 by some of the pre-eminent experts on the program. You can order them at good savings from Amazon.co.uk simply by clicking on the links below:
Mastering WordPerfect Office 2000 Mastering WordPerfect Office 2000 by Alan Simpson and Celeste Robinson
Mastering WordPerfect Office 2000: Premium Edition by Alan Simpson
WordPerfect Office 2000 : The Official Guide by Alan Neibauer
Mastering WordPerfect 9 by Alan Simpson and Gordon McComb
Que's Special Edition Using WordPerfect 9 by Laura Acklen
WordPerfect Office 2000 Bible by Harris, Stephen Harris, Erwin Zijleman