jpsmith

The Word equivalent in IBM's Lotus Symphony scores well in organization, readability, and intuitiveness. However, reading through the help file showed that there is not much content indexed by the help files. There needs to be more FAQs and upfront common tasks available to a new user. The toolbars for graphics, line drawing, charts, and tables appear to be superb in functionality - this was one of my favorite features. Since I paid attention to the help files and tutorials, I noticed that in terms of arrangement, the table of contents is very useful. The chapter layout and the step-by-step instructions are useful as well. I worked as a technical communicator one summer as an intern and I fully understand how time consuming it is to compose any sort of help file and follow thru on the process to finally get it published. Simple things like knowing which words are keywords and which words need to be hyperlinked. Conducting searches, comparing to MS Office, and following the logical layout of the how-to procedures were the main areas of concentration. The same rubric and overall survey were used on IBM's Spreadsheet and Presentation software.

I really liked how the Lotus Symphony came as a suite with the 3 packaged together into a tabbed layout. Its nice to see freeware available and OpenOffice.org software available to use so one is not limited by Microsoft's Office. This office suite is a wise choice for a small startup company with little expendable cash.