Two obstacles hold people back from dropping the office suite they were given (usually Microsoft Office) in favour of one of the alternatives. The first is money: why change suite if it's cheaper to upgrade what you already have? The second issue is compatibility: Microsoft Office file formats have become a business standard.

The first issue is a red herring, since in business you should be using the best software for the job, not the one that came free for some reason. If another suite is faster, better featured, less demanding on memory and hard disk space, and so on, these are good reasons to throw your existing one away. We can also kill off the second issue altogether, as all the office suites on test can open and save back to Microsoft Office file formats as standard.

So in our view, Microsoft Office 2000 is not as essential as people tend to make out. The programs are slow and the interfaces are top-heavy despite the thousands of features they promise - most of which you will never use. For the undemanding standalone user on a very small budget, Ability Office 2000 would be a far better choice. Even in a networked environment, you should find that Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.5 and Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 offer a better deal for your money than Microsoft Office 2000.

Our favourite, though, is StarOffice 5.1. No other office suite can offer the same level of integrated and Internet-aware features in such a high-performance and thoroughly professional set of business applications. We warn you that the desktop interface might not appeal, but if all your work centres around an office software suite, StarOffice will make life a good deal easier.