gobeProductive 3Gobe Software The demise of Be, Inc. in 2001 was a sad event for fans of the BeOS operating system. But at the same time it was a real benefit for Windows users because it gave them the opportunity to use Gobe Software's outstanding gobeProductive office software, which had until that time been produced exclusively for BeOS. But Windows users won't corner the market on this package, as an older BeOS edition of the product is still available and Gobe promises a release of version 3 for Linux soon. gobeProductive is an efficient little productivity suite that combines a text editor, spreadsheet, slide show generator, and two image editors into one slim, inexpensive, easy to use package. The word processor tool will be familiar to anyone who uses a computer on a regular basis, but its relatively simple menus do hide a lot of power. Images generated by the integrated graphics and photo editing tools can be rotated and moved anywhere on a page, pushing gobeProductive's text editor beyond being just a word processor and into page layout territory. It's almost to the point of being a competitor to Microsoft Publisher and Adobe PageMaker. Almost. (We'll call it "Publisher Lite" and leave things at that.) The tool will save documents in HTML format, but the source code is as messy as the trash Word and FrontPage churn out. For Web publishing I recommend a real Web editor like Macromedia Dreamweaver or gobeProductive's native PDF file format. (More on that later.) The spreadsheet tool is adequate and the presentation software, which also integrates nicely with the text editor and image tools, seems to be an adequate replacement for PowerPoint - but I honestly had very little time to mess with that aspect of the product since there isn't much demand for endless slideshow presentations in my line of work. There is, by the way, no gobeProductive database software, so anyone requiring that option would do well to check out StarOffice or AppleWorks. But most people won't notice the difference anyway. gobeProductive shares a lot in common with AppleWorks, and that's no coincidence since most of the people at Gobe Software are from the software team that originally developed ClarisWorks for Apple. The two products do have some differences: Gobe has no plans for a Mac OS release of its product for the Macintosh and Apple has no plans for a Linux edition of AppleWorks, and gobeProductive is (at least for now) about $25 cheaper than the Apple software. AppleWorks for Windows also tends to be one release behind its Mac OS sister, pushing gobeProductive to the top of our small comparison chart on the Windows side of the fence. If you like AppleWorks on the Mac, you'll be satisfied with gobeProductive on Windows. But the real point of this review is to compare Productive with Microsoft Office, and in that contest Gobe's package really is the clear winner. It may not matter too much to an end user, but in an age where the cost of buying and maintaining software matters significantly to a company's bottom line, gobeProductive is far superior to Office. As this is being written, the cheapest version of Office (XP Standard for Students and Teachers) costs $175, more than twice the price sticker on a retail box of gobeProductive. And that's a specially priced Office package not available to most buyers - the real deal Office XP Standard upgrade is $239, while the full retail box is an astounding $480. Yes, that's more than 6 and a half times more for just a single user edition of Microsoft Office XP. That leads us to the next advantage of going Gobe: Even discounting the lower base price, Productive has friendlier licensing terms than Microsoft's bloated cash cow. The underdog's "Family License" allows installation on any computer inside a single household, no matter how many. So that's one on dad's laptop, one on mom's desktop, and one on both the kids' PCs for just $75. Microsoft charges extra for that family option, or does if you want to do it legally. The Gobe license also allows for installation on one workplace desktop and laptop at the same time so long as they aren't both being used consecutively. Another way gobeProductive saves resources is by minimizing the hardware necessary for a computer to run it. Office XP running on Windows XP requires at least 128MB RAM plus another 8MB for every Office component running. gobeProductive only needs 80MB to run, with nothing extra required for doing multiple tasks. Even worse, Office XP needs some 210MB of disk space - over 10 times more than Gobe, which only asks for 20MB. Yes, an entire productivity software package in 20MB of disk space. That also means it loads faster and the lower RAM requirements allow the program to handle larger files. A .doc file with over 270 pages is slow and halting in Word 2002 but scrolls smoothly after being imported into gobeProductive on the same XP machine. It could be because of a programming difference in the software or just because Productive leaves more free memory for the document to use, but either way the smoothness is a definite improvement over Microsoft's kludgeware. Gobe does open and save Word files, and does a fair job of it too, considering Microsoft's continually shifting standards. Unfortunately the translation isn't perfect and some Word documents with a lot of tabbing or text columns lose their layout in Productive. gobeProductive also reads and saves Excel spreadsheet files, but not PowerPoint presentation documents. (Although that might be a good thing if you're as sick of slide shows as the average office worker is.) One unique feature of gobeProductve that really makes the program stand out is its ability to natively save files in the non-proprietary PDF format popularized by Adobe. PDF files cannot be edited after creation but they can be read with free software available for every modern computer platform, ensuring that anyone anywhere can read the documents. The file format is a good solution for publishing lengthy documents online, especially now that Google can search PDF documents just like HTML files. Even if all you ever do with Productive is make PDF files, it's a whole lot cheaper than Adobe Acrobat - and the format is native so there's no waiting for gobeProductive to print the file to an Adobe converter like with Word and other programs using the Acrobat plugins. I know of no other Windows word processing software that comes with this built in. One honestly has to wonder why nobody thought of doing this before in consumer word processing software. Overall, gobeProductive is definitely worth a close look if you're working on a budget and need the essential office suite tools without the Office suite price. Especially recommended as a substitute for Microsoft Word or for any Windows user who likes AppleWorks on the Mac. PLUSES: Cost; speed; flexible and adaptive licensing; highly capable word processor; native PDF file format. MINUSES: No database functionality; doesn't open or save PowerPoint files; messy HTML file source. Overall Ranking: (Four out of Five) Buy for Windows or BeOS   PUBLISHER: Gobe SoftwareVERSION: 3.0.3LICENSE: Bundled Commercial WIN REQUIREMENTS: Win 98+, 80 MB of RAM (with XP), 20 MB HD, Internet ALTERNATIVE TO: Excel, Office, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word, Works OUTSIDE REVIEWS: Ars Technica, CNET, LinuxWorld, OSNews.com, PC Magazine, Slashdot, TechTV, Tucows ADDITIONAL INFO: Official Site Reviewed by Paul Rickard, June 2002.

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