Product Reviews

Papyrus, a suite comprising word processor, spreadsheet and database, comes in two flavours, Works and Office. The former can be used for free if you take the time to register with the company.

Even when you do, the application still won't open until you sit and look at the splash screen for 10 seconds, waiting for the Try Out button to become active. This extra hurdle just seems pointless, because the splash screen tells you nothing you don't already know. Having jumped through the registration hoop, your reward is another little reminder screen that tells you what Papyrus Works is for (thanks, fellas, we'd already got that bit), and finally you get the chance to open a document.

It'll

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open most things you'd expect, including text, Word and HTML. The Word import isn't perfect (you'll get better results in OpenOffice.org offshoot, NeoOffice/J), but it's fine for simple documents. Web links come through blue and underlined, but they're not links anymore.

There are bugs and big gaping holes in functionality. For example, select the Sticky Note tool and drag a square over your document to add a note; now change your mind and decide not to bother. Oops, too late you can't. There's no undo for adding a sticky note: your only option now is to close the document and start again.

While the toolbar makes sense for most tasks, the Toolbox (a floating palette of controls) and the Menu Bar are weird, to put it mildly. The Insert menu lets you insert soft hyphens and hard spaces, but if you want to insert an image, you need to click on the yellow smiley in the Toolbox, which, of course, you were going to try next, weren't you?

Papyrus comes recommended by Lemkesoft, makers of the esteemed and excellent value image editor Graphic Converter, but don't be taken in by this. Papyrus asks a lot for the free licence and offers very little of value in return. Still, at least you don't have to shell out any money for it in the first place.