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IBM Lotus Symphony
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Overall

Reviewed By: Wayne Williams

This review updated: 08/11/2007
Featured in magazine:
Issue 174
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Lotus
Web Address: http://symphony.lotus.com


Symphony is built using the same code as OpenOffice.org, but this is not immediately obvious at first glance. The software sports an improved and more modern interface, with a useful formatting sidebar that can be docked, floated or closed. The menus have been tweaked and simplified, too.

For now, the suite only offers the core components – a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation creator – which are all accessed directly through the main program window. In other words, you can have a spreadsheet open next to a document while working on a presentation. Each file is assigned its own tab so it's easy to flick between them, and the menu bar changes according to the type of document you're working on.

Unfortunately, as promising as Symphony is, there are problems with this first release. It can be very buggy at times and there are some strange inconsistencies with the interface. The friendly Open button, for example, doesn't open documents, it creates them.

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