| PC Community Computer Users Group | |||
| Helping each other and our community use computer technology | |||
EasyOffice is available at www.e-press.com 46 KB download, free $29.99 and up (depending on your shipping choices and how many licenses you want) and whether you are happy with just purchasing a license over the internet or you want a CD in a shrink-wrapped box) for a fully supported box copy with 2 years of upgrades. The CD-ROM has more clipart, speech recognition “and a few other programs.” My box hadn’t arrived as of this review date, so I can’t comment on the voice recognition, bar coder, or backup utility yet.
The minimum system for any of this is a Pentium with 16 MB of RAM. If you want to run the speech recognition module, a minimum of 128MB of RAM on a 600MHz Pentium III is needed. 256MB of RAM coupled with a 1GHz PentiumIV-processor is guaranteed to make things better. This matches my experience and the “expert commentary” I see in chats (i.e., geek gossip) for voice recognition (VR) in general, whether you call it VR, SR (speech recognition), or STT (speech to text). While you’re sorting out the alphabet soup, try to hang on to the difference between STT and TTS (text to speech), also known as a screen reader, which is the identifying feature of this program The package claims to work in Windows (95B through XP) only. Linux is noted as requiring too many programming differences. Nary a comment about MacIntosh.
EasyOffice is an office suite with two claims to fame: 1) it is a free download for home users and 2) it has a built-in screen reader. The arrangement of the desktop and the toolbars indicates that it is aimed at an audience of beginners, although there are school and corporate licenses. Silly me, to think that schools and corporations have only expert users. At this price, one could put up with quite a bit of cute and the simple nag screen that pops up each time you open a program. “Buy Later” is the default option, so these folks do seem to be fairly user friendly. The package could be used by anyone who wants a bit of backtalk from the desktop. The screen reader can easily be turned off if you get tired of hearing yourself type. As nearly as I could tell, EasyOffice Premium is what happens when you pay for it, whether it’s just the license or if you get any of the CD options. In addition to the word processor, there is a presentation manager a spreadsheet package and a “bookkeeper.” There is a calculator program that can sit on the desktop or in front of the word processor. It also has a read-me feature. In addition to being a self-contained word processing system. SimpleWord, a bare-bones version of EasyWord, comes as part of the package. It is recommended on the website for “older, slower” machines. Saving options for EasyOffice documents include.doc, .rtf, .htm, .zip, .txt and .pdf formats. No sign of a special proprietary extension or format. In addition to reading its own files, EasyOffice will read from Word and WordPerfect files. If you just want to be read to, there’s the EasySpeaker tool bar that cansit over any application. It read to me just fine from Word, WordPerfect, and the Internet. It seems a bit cumbersome for people with severe vision and/or motor challenges, but seems like it would be a real help for people who want to rest their eyes a bit, for folks who are learning English or learning to read, and for the kind of proofreading that is helped by hearing your words come back to you. For learning purposes, I’d really prefer the word being spoken to have some kind of highlighting. As far as I can tell there are only 3 voices. I didn’t see anything about adding or varying them and I find the default a bit fast for text I really need to concentrate on. It seems that beginning readers and English speakers might want things slower, too.
There is a fair amount of helpful online documentation scattered through the different purchasing options. I sent one email on a Saturday afternoon to tech support and got an answer by Saturday evening. My Sunday morning query about changing the reading speed had a response before nightfall. The answer isn’t what I want: reading speed can be changed only in Windows XP, which I am not running yet and certainly won’t fit on any of the current school-based computers I might buy this program for. The change is effected through the Speech Control Panel. This is cumbersome at best and probably impossible in the desktop security system that comes with our new schoolcomputers. Tech support came through without identifying myself as a potential purchaser of a fleet license or asking me for any information or money. In summary, EasyOffice is a great bargain for the price despite its drawbacks, some of which it shares with the high-priced products. It is an incredibly good balance between the features of an office suite and a screen reader.
Copyright © July, 2002 by Bayle Emlein
Product Information:
EasyOffice
E-Press Corp.
Richmond Hill, Ontario (just north of Toronto)
http://www.e-press.com
All reviews © PC Community and the individual authors.
| a | ||||||
| Home | For Members | Join PCC | About PCC | Contact Us | ||
PC Community, P.O. Box 55513, Hayward, CA 94540-0513
Copyright 2008
Last Updated on May 1, 2005 6:07 PM by Webmaster