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What the Press Says About SoftMaker Office for Linux and FreeBSD

SoftMaker Office

"SoftMaker Office 2006 represents an improved, more powerful Microsoft Office 2003, but built with ease and speed at every turn in its interface and engine."

The Great Software Blog

...

"Recommended, compact office suite with very good filters for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel."

PC Professionell

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"Price/Performance: very good
Over-all rating: very good"

PC Magazin

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"Proves that office suite software can be useful and effective – and inexpensive at the same time!"

"Highly recommended"

Computer easy

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"We recommend TextMaker and PlanMaker without reservation."

WINdorado

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"An extremely inexpensive alternative to the conventional Microsoft Office offering"

Computer Partner

  

TextMaker

"In a nutshell: it's fast, inexpensive, and works with Word documents flawlessly. [...]

In general TextMaker was a very enjoyable word processor to use. ... With TextMaker there is little to no learning curve if you're already familiar with any other word processing program."

The Jem Report

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"TextMaker is one of those gems ... that those who do not love them are those who have not used them. ... It really deserves to become the standard Linux word processor. It blows everything else written for Linux -- indeed, everything else I've seen that's currently published for any platform -- clear out of the water. But it's not just good by comparison.

It is one of the best word processors -- maybe the best word processor -- I've ever used."

Dennis E. Powell, Linux and Main

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"The speed with which the program launches catches the eye. The TextMaker interface pops up immediately on modern machines, and TextMaker runs smoothly even on older hardware.

"The MS Word document import function worked very well, importing even complex layouts."

Linux Magazine

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"TextMaker's installation was flawless under Red Hat Linux. Once the program is set up, anyone familiar with desktop word-processing programs will feel right at home. All of the controls and options we are familiar with from previous destop publishing or word processing programs are in the expected places. ..."

"TextMaker loads very fast, with no hesitancy on our test system (a 133 MHz Pentium II). This seems to be due in part to SoftMaker's decision to use its own class library, rather than either the Gtk or Qt toolkits. The product takes up little resources, and full versions are available for mobile devices such as the Pocket PC. ..."

"We had no problems importing very detailed 35 to 110 page native MS Word documents with rich images, charts, symbols, and more without fail. The same document, saved as a '.doc' from StarOffice also imported into TextMaker without any issue. ..."

"Our advice: Download the product as a great Office replacement for MS Word on Linux. TextMaker delivers a stable, and capable, word processor for the Desktop Linux user."

desktoplinux.com

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"Perhaps the most appreciated feature will be the lossless round-trip conversion for Word documents, which worked without a hitch on all our formatted, footnoted and neat Word documents.

Overall, TextMaker is a true wonder of a program."

 Anthony Newman, infosync.no

 

  

PlanMaker

"You won't find a more Excel-compatible spreadsheet on any operating system, but Microsoft compatibility is far from PlanMaker's only worthwhile feature.

PlanMaker is both smaller in size and faster to start than most of the other spreadsheet applications I've used. One particularly data-heavy test case with a single large chart took only 10 seconds to load, while the same worksheet took more than a minute to load in StarOffice 7 Calc.

Compatibility with other programs is where PlanMaker really shines. SoftMaker has a page detailing its Excel compatibility features. While you have to take a manufacturer's propaganda with a grain of salt, my own analysis of the test cases shows them to be completely accurate and as-advertised."

Jem Matzan, NewsForge

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"Compatibility with Microsoft products is higher than it is with OpenOffice. The speed is definitely there. PlanMaker works well in a low memory environment, better than either OpenOffice or Microsoft Office. [...]

PlanMaker also has some interesting drawing tools. In fact, from my perspective they are good enough to rough out an ER diagram or flowchart. Easy to use, easier than what Excel has as a matter of fact, and simple with plenty of screen control and mouse manipulation to make resizing an object simple and moving connected entities easy."

Daniel Christle, WindoWatch

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"The enormous feature-richness at minimal hardware requirements speaks for PlanMaker as an Excel alternative."

PC Professionell

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"PlanMaker provides Excel feeling – without the bloat and at a fair price."

PC-Direkt

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"PlanMaker is a powerful and fast calculation program with an outstanding price/performance ratio. Quick to install, easy to learn."

CHIP

 

 

 

Comparing TextMaker to other word processors

c't, one of Germany's leading computer magazines investigated how common word processors cope with large documents (140 pages with 120 images, 240 footnotes etc.). Here are some excerpts:

Microsoft Word 2003

"Inserting pictures and footnotes into large Word 2003 documents resembles a thriller without a happy ending. As soon as you place images in a document, Word 2003 starts struggling with them – and this is so already on the first pages of the document. So, instead of embedding pictures, we decided to try the option "Link to file" and were at least able to insert 50 pictures. But beyond the twentieth picture, the reviewer's adrenaline level rose significantly, as pictures started jumping around and didn't want to stay at their designated position. Picture number 33 seemed to have glued itself to the page's top margin and ignored any attempts to reposition it. [...] It was impossible to predictably lay out the document – we decided to throw in the towel and handed Microsoft Word a dishonorable discharge with the File/Exit command.

Conclusion: It is stunning that a mega corporation like Microsoft is not able to produce a functioning word processor after 12 years of development."

  

WordPerfect 11

"Creating large documents with WordPerfect is like walking on raw eggs. There is the constant impression that something important could break at any moment or stop working correctly. Initially, the program accepted 90 pictures without hiccups. [...] With picture number 91, we decided to justify the paragraph that contained the picture. A program crash was the result. WordPerfect froze and had to be restarted. After the restart, inserting new paragraphs caused sudden unwanted font changes. Switching back to the desired font caused such a severe crash that we had to press the computer's reset button. As long as we restricted ourselves to just 70 pictures, such phenomena did not happen.

But still, large documents in WordPerfect are a gamble with an open ending."

  

TextMaker 2002

"TextMaker passed our horror test "Inserting pictures" with flying colors. The program distinguishes between an editing mode and an object mode, in which one moves and resizes pictures. Pictures are surrounded by an inner frame that contains the actual image, and an outer frame that lets the user easily set the wrap margins for each of the pictures four sides – a beautiful and intuitive solution.

120 pictures and twice as many footnotes didn't faze TextMaker in the slightest."

 

 © 2006 SoftMaker Software GmbH

     

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