Corel releases WordPerfect Office 2000

Corel Corporation on Tuesday announced the immediate availability ofWordPerfect Office 2000, the latest version of its integrated office suite.Nearly two years in the making, WordPerfect Office 2000 delivers greaterperformance, increased compatibility, and lower prices than rival MicrosoftOffice 2000, which is due next month.

"Our expectations have been exceeded," said Dr. Michael Cowpland, CEO andpresident of Corel Corporation. "We have created a compatible, easy-to-use,high-performance package at an extremely modest price. I expect that theonly people who will not want to purchase WordPerfect Office 2000 will bethose who have not yet tried it."

WordPerfect Office includes the WordPerfect 9 word processor, the QuattroPro 9 spreadsheet, Corel Presentations 9 for slide shows and drawings, theCorelCENTRAL personal information manager, and more. For this revision,Corel has even adopted Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications 6.0 as itscommon macro language.

Corel says that WordPerfect usage in the United States actually increased10% last year to 22 million users, compared to 44 million for MicrosoftWord. And the company is pricing its office suite nicely, with the StandardEdition going for $99 while the Professional version will cost $200.

In other WordPerfect news, Corel also recently announced that its Linuxversion of WordPerfect 8--which is available for free download from theWeb--has surpassed one million download attempts. WordPerfect 8 for Linux,available as a 24MB download, is easily one of the most important releasesfor the open source operating system. And a version of WordPerfect Office2000 will be available for Linux users late this year, Corel says