 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group WordPerfect Office 2000 Service Packs Bryan Leech bryan@melbpc.org.au |
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WordPerfect has been a name established in the word processing field for a long time. In the DOS days, WordPerfect held more than 80% of the international word processing market. When Windows arrived, Microsoft, with its familiarity with the environment, was able to produce a superior product and took over the word processing market, dominating it ever since (WordPerfect 5.1, and then 5.2, their initial entries into the Windows market were sadly lacking). It is a pity that the domination by Microsoft still holds, because there are some fine competing products and WordPerfect 9 (the word processing component of the Office 2000 suite) is a superb product. Coupled with Quattro Pro 9 and Presentations 9, along with a clutch of additional programs, WordPerfect Office 2000 is a suite that ranks with the best (I think it is the best), and it is considerably less expensive than the Microsoft offering.
A Flawed Product
The problem is that when WordPerfect Office 2000 first appeared on the market, I suspect in a rush so as not
to be left behind by Microsoft Office 2000, it was full of bugs. In fact, it was the buggiest (let me coin a
word) program I have ever used. The overall design was excellent, but those bugs really drove me around the
twist!
Recognising the problems, Corel quickly released a Service Pack (Service Pack 1) for downloading from their Canadian site. This pack not only addressed many of the major bugs but added a few new features. However, if you didn't read the print carefully, this was a US ONLY version. If you down-loaded and used this pack (around 35 MB) in Australia, then, even if everything has seemed fine until now, you may be in for some troubles in the future. Sometimes the US service pack works satisfactorily on the Australian installed product. At other times it causes problems, especially if you try to load the new Service Pack 2, as there are some files in the US version that are not compatible with the international versions of the suite. If you waited, and got Service Pack 1 on CD from Corel in Australia, you should have no cause for concern.
Updated Release of WordPerfect Office 2000
Recently, Corel Australia has released an update of the office suite, and the original version, release number 9.0.0.528, has been replaced with a new version, release number 9.0.0.58E incorporating all the Service Pack 1 corrections and additions. This is available on CD-ROM free to registered users of WordPerfect Office 2000 on request to Corel Customer Service at 1800 658 850. Alternatively if you are a masochist, you can download the international version of Service Pack 1 from the Corel Canada site - at just over 46 MB!
Problems With The US Service Pack
If you are one of the unfortunates who rushed in (like me) and downloaded and applied the US version of Service Pack 1, it is wise to undo your actions and make a valid installation.
First, you will need to uninstall the complete suite. This, because of the non-compatible files, will result in incomplete uninstallation and you be left with some files that you can remove. Unless you follow my path you will be left with a legacy of an incomplete directory that is useless and cannot be safely removed unless you are an expert with the registry. Warning: do not try to remove them manually as this will corrupt your registry. I tried to get clever and remove the files anyway. To cut a long story short this finally resulted in me reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling everything from scratch. At least I now know I have a clean registry and a Windows\System directory free from strays of legacy programs that have come and gone.
If you uninstall and reinstall, you must reinstall to a directory with a different name, otherwise the non-valid files may still interfere with the correct ones. If needed, you may then apply the service pack.
Service Pack 2
In my dealings with the ever-helpful Corel Technical Support and Customer Support people, I was advised that a second service pack has become available. At the time of writing it is only available by downloading from the Canadian site (http://www.corel.com/support/ftpsite/pub/wordperfect/wpwin/office2000/index.htm). This includes the International version of Service Pack 2 which runs perfectly with Australian installations, and a Service Pack 2 Help File, an updated help file applicable, apparently, to all versions of the suite.
Now, if you thought Service Pack 1 was large enough, this next piece of information will come as a shock. Service Pack 2 weighs in at just over 66 MB with a further 15.5 MB for the updated help file. With luck, by the time you read this, Service Pack 2 files will be available from Corel Australia on CD-ROM. Unfortunately, I had to set up my download program to run over three nights to get the files from Canada.
An Aside
If you use the downloader that is part of Internet Explorer 5 (5.01 is now available by the way), then you are limiting yourself. For serious down-loads, you need a download program such as Go!Zilla (obtain it from http://www.gozilla.com/) which can be scheduled to start a download at a preselected time, to resume interrupted downloads (not all download sites support this feature) immediately after the interruption or at some later time, to discontinue at some prescheduled time, to hang up when the download is complete, and to turn off your computer when all is finished. There are a number of similar programs. But enough of this.
Back To The Main Story
Provided you have a valid updated installation of WordPerfect Office 2000 (ie version 9.0.0.588), just run Service Pack 2 and you will have a highly sophisticated product with a version number of 9.0.0.644. Do not run Service pack 2 on the original product.
Only run it on version 9.0.0.588 (either the recently-released updated version, or the original to which has been applied the international version of Service Pack 1).
How Does The Product Shape Up Now?
So far, I have not been able to fault this latest release. All the bugs I had found have gone. Some are depicted in Figures 1, 2 and 3 accompanying this article.
To list all the corrections and changes, or even to list the highlights, would take a lot of space, so I suggest that if you wish to find out just what changes have been made, visit the Corel Web site given above and download the release notes (this will only take a few minutes). The Service packs are suited to both the standard and professional products and amend Setup, WordPerfect 9, Quattro Pro 9, Corel Presentations 9, CorelCENTRAL 9, and Paradox 9. The listed changes on the release notes run to ten pages over both service packs.
If you don't wish to bother with chasing up these lists, be assured that WordPerfect Office 2000 is now the product it should have been when first released: a polished and powerful suite of smoothly-running office programs, suited to both the beginner and the most demanding professional. This suite can proudly take its place beside any competing contender on the market and is well worth your attention.
Reprinted from the March 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
